A/HAT   HAPPENS 
iFTEH  DEATH  ? 

\    SYMPOSIUM 

BY 

LEADING  WRITERS 
AND    THINKERS 


GHarles  Josselyn 


A  Symposium  by  Leading  Writers  and  Thinkers 


"  What  happens  after  death  ?  "  is  the  most  per- 
sonal question  there  is,  and  this  symposium  from 
some  of  the  most  thoughtful  and  influential  men  of 
the  day  should  add  light  to  what  is,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  problem  of  all  ages  and  the  most  vital. 
Opinions  vary  greatly,  as  the  following  titles  show. 

PARTIAL   LIST  OF   CONTENTS 

Do  we  Cease  to  Live  at  Death?  -  Rev.  R.  F.  Morton,  M.A.,  D.D. 
We  do  not  Die  -  -  -  Rev.  J.  E.  Roberts,  M.A.,  B.D. 

After  Death  —  Nothingness  ....     fjr.  Max  Nordau 

Three  Arguments  for  an  After-life  -  Prof.  A.  H.  Sayce,  LL.D.,  D.D. 
Our  Chance  of  Immortality  -  The  Late  Monsignor  R.  H.  Benson 
The  Undying  Soul  •  -  -  Rev.  A.  C.  Dixon,  B.A.,D.D. 

The  Misbeliefs  of  Religion  Sir  Hiram  S.  Maxim,  C.E.,  M.E. 
Is  there  an  Intermediate  State  -  -  Rev.  Benjamin  Bell,  B.D. 

The  Theosophic  View Mrs.  Annie  Besant 

Shall  we  Live  Again  ?  Rev.  A .  J.  Waldron 

The  Familiar  Unknown  •         •         -         -  A.  P.  Sinnett 

After  Death  —  Something  ....  Rev.  Stanley  Rogers 
Can  Converse  be  held  with  the  Spirits  of  Friends?  George  E.  Winter 
Science  and  Immortality  -  -  Canon  S.  A.  Alexander,  M.A. 
The  Biblical  View  ....  Rev.  Dinsdale  T.  Young 


WHAT  HAPPENS  AFTER  DEATH? 


WHAT  HAPPENS 
AFTER   DEATH? 


A  SYMPOSIUM  By 
LEADING  WRITERS 
AND  THINKERS 


FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  and  LONDON 

1916 


r- 


CONTENTS 

PACK 

FOREWORD ix 

1.  Is  THIS  LIFE  ALL  ?  i 

Canon  J.  W.  Horsley,  M.A. 

2.  Do  WE  CEASE  TO  LIVE  AT  DEATH  ?          .10 

Rev.  R.  F.  Horton,  M.A.,  D.D. 

3.  SHALL  WE  LIVE  AGAIN  ?          ...     15 

Rev.  A.  J.  Waldron 

4.  WE  DO  NOT  DIE      .         .         .         .         .     20 

Rev.  J.  E.  Roberts,  M.A.,  B.D. 

5.  AFTER  DEATH — NOTHINGNESS  !  .     26 

Dr.  Max  Nordau 

6.  AFTER  DEATH — WHAT  ?    .         .         .         .30 

T.  Claye  Shaw,  M.D.,  F.R.C.P. 

7.  OUR  CHANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY          .        .    34 

The  late  Monsignor  R.  H.  Benson 

8.  THE  APPEAL  TO  THE  FUTURE  .         .         -37 

Rev.  Frank  Ballard,  D.D.,  M.A.,  B.Sc. 

9.  THREE  ARGUMENTS  FOR  AN  AFTER-LIFE    .     42 

Prof.  A.  H.  Sayce,  D.Litt.,  LL.D.,  D.D. 


615S32 


Contents 


PAGE 

10.  AFTER  DEATH — SOMETHING  !     .         .         -44 

R#v.  Stanley  Rogers 

11.  THE  FAMILIAR  UNKNOWN          .         .         -49 

A.  P.  SinneU 

12.  MY  BELIEF 52 

Ellen  Thorneycroft  Fowler 

13.  THE  UNDYING  SOUL         .        .        .        .53 

Rev.  A.  C.  Dixon,  B.A.,  D.D. 

14.  THE  MISBELIEFS  OF  RELIGION  .         .         .61 

Sir  Hiram  S.  Maxim,  C.E.,  M.E. 

15.  DEATH  is  NOT  THE  END  !  .         .66 

Sir  Robert  Anderson,  K.C.B.,  B.A.,  LL.D. 

16.  No  ONE  COMES  BACK  TO  TELL  .     .     70 

John  Bloundelle- Burton 

17.  THE  BIBLICAL  VIEW         .        .        .        -73 

Rev.  Dinsdale  T.  Young 

1 8.  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY     .         .         .     78 

/.  Arthur  Hill 

19.  THE  THEOSOPHIC  VIEW    .         .        .        .86 

Mrs.  Annie  Besant 

20.  SCIENCE  AND  IMMORTALITY       .         .         -93 

Canon  S.  A.  Alexander,  M.A. 

21.  CAN  CONVERSE  BE  HELD  WITH  THE 

SPIRITS  OF  FRIENDS  ?  .        .        .        -95 

George  E.  Winter 
vi 


Contents 

PAGE 

22.  WE   CANNOT   COME  TO   AN   END  .  .    102 

A.  C.  Benson,  C.V.O.,  M.A. 

23.  IS   THERE   AN    INTERMEDIATE   STATE  ?  .    103 

Rev.  Benjamin  Bell,  B.D. 

24.  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  SELF     ....  107 

Flora  Annie  Steel 

25.  WHAT  is  IT  THAT  SURVIVES  ?    .         .         .  109 

Lady  Grove 

26.  THE  SIMPLEST  FAITHS  ARE  BEST      .         .no 

Lee  Danvers 


vn 


FOREWORD 

"WHAT  happens  after  death?"  is,  of  course, 
the  most  painfully  personal  question  there  is. 
A  great  many  matters  of  controversy  may 
interest  us  without  vitally  concerning  us  in- 
dividually, but,  after  all,  every  one  of  us  has, 
at  some  time  or  other,  to  face  death,  and  it  is 
inevitable  that  the  question  of  the  hereafter 
should  have  a  fascination  at  once  peculiar  and 
painful. 

To-day  millions  of  brave  men  on  the  long- 
drawn-out  battle  fronts  are  face  to  face  with  the 
prospect  of  sudden  death,  and  both  to  them  and 
to  those  near  and  dear  to  them,  the  old,  old 
problem  of  the  future  life  has  suddenly  become 
urgent  and  acute. 

This  little  book  does  not  pretend  to  give  a 
dogmatic  and  exhaustive  reply  to  the  question 
"After  Death— What?"  Fifty  years  ago  the 
reply,  both  of  orthodox  upholders  of  faith,  and 
those  who  did  not  believe  in  the  survival  after 
death,  would  have  been  much  more  precise,  and 

ix 


Foreword 

much  more  emphatic.  To-day  there  is  far  less 
tendency  among  the  champions  of  faith  to  be 
dogmatically  certain,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  is  far  greater  tendency  among  scientists 
to  regard  the  question  as  one  worthy  of  their 
scientific  treatment. 

The  opinions  gathered  together  in  this  little 
book  arose  out  of  a  newspaper  discussion  con- 
ducted recently,  a  discussion  which  aroused  such 
extraordinary  interest  that  it  was  felt  the  articles 
ought  to  be  brought  together  and  supplemented 
in  this  more  permanent  form. 

Naturally,  being  a  symposium  of  men  of 
widely  different  schools  of  thought,  there  is 
often  considerable  diversity  in  the  views  ex- 
pressed, but  it  is  felt  that  this  very  freedom  of 
discussion  and  variety  of  expression  will  be  a 
help  rather  than  a  hindrance  to  all  those  who 
want  to  form  their  own  opinion  on  a  subject 
necessarily  vague,  but  always  vital. 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

account  for  all  these  shadows,  and  that  from 
their  united  lispings  or  sighs,  inarticulate  as 
they  were  and  inconclusive  in  detail,  heard  pos- 
sibly only  by  the  expectant  ear,  there  yet  came 
with  some  distinctness  a  resultant  voice  that 
never  muttered  of  death  and  nothingness,  but 
always  heartened  man  with  a  song  that  spoke  of 
life  and  love  and  light;  life  indomitable,  love 
progressive,  in  light  ineffable  for  ever  and  for 
aye. 


DO  WE  GEASE  TO  LIVE  AT  DEATH? 

By  the  Rev.  R.  F.  HORTON,  M.A.,  D.D. 

"  Do  we  cease  to  live  at  death  ?  "  Naturally  if 
we  cease  to  live  when  we  die,  there  can  be  no 
effective  argument  or  evidence  to  show  that  we 
should  live  again  in  this  world  or  in  any  other. 

The  personality  would  have  ceased  to  be,  and 
when  it  has  once  ceased  to  be,  a  resuscitation 
would  be  simply  a  new  creation,  and  that  new 
creation  would  not  be  the  person  that  had  lived 
before. 

It  is  this  that  makes  the  argument  for  rein- 
carnation so  unsatisfying  when  you  come  to 
reflect  upon  it.  The  reincarnated  life  has  no 
conscious  or  moral  connection  with  its  former 
experience,  and  consequently  the  supposed 
judgment  in  the  renewed  life  has  no  shadow  of 
justice;  the  reward  is  not  deserved  if  the  rein- 
carnation is  a  favourable  one,  nor  is  the  punish- 
ment deserved  if  the  reverse. 

The  question,  therefore,  that  confronts 
humanity,  and  has  confronted  it  since  the 
earliest  records  of  human  life  upon  this  planet, 
is  whether  the  death  of  the  body  involves  the 
dissolution  of  personality. 

10 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

Now  putting  aside  for  a  moment  the  power- 
ful argument  which  is  derived  from  the  Chris- 
tian fact  of  the  resurrection  and  looking  simply 
at  the  argument  of  natural  religion,  we  can 
certainly  marshal  an  immense  weight  of  evi- 
dence to  show  that  the  soul  is  not  involved  in 
the  destruction  of  the  body. 

Take,  for  example,  the  Phaedon  of  Plato — 
that  immortal  description  of  Socrates  arguing 
for  his  immortality  as  the  hemlock  poison 
worked  and  death  crept  up  from  his  feet  to  his 
heart.  It  is  true  that  the  formal  arguments 
advanced  in  that  great  piece  of  literature  may 
not  carry  conviction,  but  behind  those  argu- 
ments which  were  relative  only  to  that  time  and 
that  world  of  thought  in  which  Socrates  lived, 
there  is  the  indubitable  fact  that  Socrates  died 
in  that  way,  and  faced  death  with  the  cheerful 
confidence  that  he  himself  would  escape  from 
the  perishing  body  and  that  his  persecutors  and 
judges  would  not  be  able  to  capture  the  soul  in 
its  flight. 

Consequently  his  last  command  to  his  friends 
was  to  offer  a  cock  to  ^Esculapius,  the  god  of 
healing,  because  he  felt  that  when  the  body 
should  lie  still  and  cold  in  death  he  himself 
would  be  whole  and  more  utterly  alive  than  he 
had  been  when  he  inhabited  the  body. 

It  may,  however,  be  said  that  the  conviction 
of  Socrates  carries  no  more  weight  than  the  con- 

ii 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

viction  of  the  modern  man  of  science,  who  care- 
fully assures  us  that  he  has  no  expectation  of  a 
future  life  and  no  desire  for  it. 

But  let  us  look  at  that  argument  for 
a  moment.  Is  the  personal  conviction  of  a  mind 
and  character  like  Socrates  of  no  more  intrinsic 
value  than  the  personal  conviction  of  a  man  who 
expects  to  cease  to  be  directly  a  cup  of  poison 
or  some  other  accident  arrests  the  functions  of 
his  body  ?  Instinctively  you  reply  that  the  per- 
sonality of  Socrates  Is  incalculably  greater  and 
more  significant  than  the  personality  of  this  poor 
materialist  whose  life  is  a  mere  breath,  a  shadow, 
that  passes  immediately  away. 

And  why  is  the  personality  of  Socrates  im- 
pressing the  world  to-day,  after  more  than  2,000 
years  ? 

The  answer  simply  is,  because  of  his  im- 
movable conviction  about  his  surviving  death — a 
conviction  which  gives  to  his  life  and  to  all  that 
he  said  and  did  a  depth  and  a  meaning  which 
never  has  ceased  to  affect  mankind. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  man  who  from  any 
cause  has  surrendered  the  belief  in  a  life  to  come 
dwindles  and  withers  so  that  his  personality 
becomes  intrinsically  insignificant,  useless  to  the 
world  as  it  is,  and,  of  course,  useless  to  himself. 

But  now  what  does  this  mean?  If  we  turn 
from  the  individual  to  the  whole  body  of  human 
beings  that  are  living  to-day  upon  the  globe  the 

12 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

same  argument  immediately  applies.  The 
human  race  derives  its  significance,  its  value, 
entirely  from  its  beliefs  in  a  life  that  goes  beyond 
any  conscious  earthly  life. 

Just  so  far  as  the  race  surrenders  the  faith 
in  immortality  which  has  been  its  appanage  from 
the  beginning,  it  dwindles  and  withers — it  feels 
that  it  can  give  no  account  of  itself.  The  pos- 
sibilities of  some  terrestrial  paradise  or  some 
indefinite  improvement  of  the  material  condi- 
tions of  life  offer  no  sufficient  reason  for  the 
deeper  instincts  and  supports  of  the  race. 

If  it  attempts  to  picture  to  itself  the  ultimate 
condition  of  human  society  when  all  the  present 
evils  are  removed  and  universal  health  and  well- 
being  are  secured,  it  is  immediately  paralysed 
by  the  thought,  "But  what  does  that  matter? 
And  what  has  been  achieved  if  all  of  the  in- 
dividuals which  compose  the  race  are  simply 
passing  away  into  nothingness  like  the  autumnal 
leaves  when  the  winter  approaches  ?  " 

The  argument,  therefore,  is  much  stronger 
than  it  appears  at  the  outset,  because  it  involves 
not  only  the  individual  life  but  the  life  of  the 
race.  The  one  intolerable  thing  for  the  race  is 
that  life  should  lose  its  significance  and  should 
sink  back  into  the  mere  animal  functions  of 
nutrition  and  procreation,  and  significance  can- 
not be  given  to  life  upon  this  planet  so  far  as 
that  life  develops  into  that  greatest  of  earthly 

13 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

phenomena,  personality,  unless  to  personality 
can  be  attributed  the  quality  of  continuance. 

It  may,  of  course,  be  said  that  this  quality 
can  be  secured  and  this  significance  can  be 
given  to  the  life  of  the  race  if  the  selected  in- 
dividuals, the  "supermen"  as  they  would  be 
called  to-day,  may  secure  continuance  while  the 
large  mass  of  undistinguished  and  futile  lives 
pass  away  into  nothingness,  and  from  a  purely 
philosophical  point  of  view  that  argument  may 
be  valid.  But  against  it  rises  up  all  the  sense 
of  pity  and  consideration  for  even  the  lowest  of 
human  beings  which  we  have  learned  from 
Christianity. 

It  is  Christ's  unique  service  to  mankind  that 
He  taught  us  to  see  the  greatness  and  absolute 
worth  of  even  the  most  insignificant  human  soul. 
And  in  that  way,  by  another  line  of  argument, 
the  certainty  that  some  human  beings  must 
survive  death  is  changed  into  a  whole  confidence 
that  all  human  beings  who  are  in  any  true  sense 
personalities,  continue  and  move  on  to  reap  the 
fruits  of  their  life  on  earth  in  a  life  under  new 
and  perhaps  more  hopeful  conditions. 

Even  the  most  sceptical  and  disappointed 
human  heart  that  is  touched  by  pity  and  love 
will  write  as  its  own  epitaph,  "  A  little  trust  that 
when  we  die  we  reap  our  sowing,  and  so  good- 
bye !  " 


r  *f  dL 


SHALL  WE  LIVE  AGAIN? 

By  the  Rev.  A.  J.  WALDRON 

THIS  is  the  eternal  question,  as  old  as  death. 
It  is,  and  ever  will  be,  the  problem  of  religion, 
science,  and  philosophy.  The  borderland  be- 
tween "the  living"  and  "the  not  living"  is  the 
Waterloo  of  science. 

The  great  question  is  :  What  proof  have  we 
of  life  beyond  the  grave?  I  dare  assert  that 
the  proof  is  so  clear  as  almost  to  amount  to 
mathematical  certainty. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  enormous  amount  of 
evidence  furnished  by  the  phenomena  of 
psychical  research ;  read  what  Sir  Oliver  Lodge 
has  written  in  "The  Destiny  of  Man";  weigh 
over  the  names  of  men  like  Dr.  Barrett,  F.  W. 
Myers,  Prof.  Sidgwick,  Dr.  Hodgson,  Camille 
Flammarion,  A.  J.  Balfour,  and  a  host  of  others. 
I  am  quite  aware  that  the  history  of  spiritualism 
contains  innumerable  stories  of  fraud,  illusion, 
delusion,  etc.,  but  when  you  have  finished  your 
criticism  you  are  still  left  with  a  residuum  of 
fact,  which  baffles  solution  except  you  admit 
that  there  is  striking  evidence  of  communication 
between  what  we  call  "the  living  and  the  dead." 

'5 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

I  have  studied  spiritualism  for  twenty  years; 
I  do  not  think  there  is  a  book  worth  reading 
on  the  subject  which  I  have  not  carefully 
studied.  I  have  debated  with  some  of  the  most 
eminent  mediums,  and  I  have  studied  the  ques- 
tion in  seance,  and  I  have  been  forced  to  the 
conclusion  that  there  is  a  residuum  of  fact  which 
can  only  be  explained  on  the  spiritualistic 
hypothesis. 

But  when  the  person  is  dead  and  you  bury 
the  body,  what  becomes  of  the  life,  the  human 
ego,  this  atom  of  force,  that  used  the  body,  that 
played  its  divine  harmony  in  the  brain  cells? 

If  it  goes  into  space  or  a  spiritual  sphere, 
how  can  it  act  without  a  medium,  for  we  know 
that  on  this  plane  the  phenomenon  of  human 
life  depends  on  a  physical  organism  ?  Not  so 
fast,  please.  The  old  chemistry,  it  is  true,  said 
the  line  of  communication  between  the  tips  of 
the  finger  and  the  brain  was  a  chain  of  atoms, 
atom  conveying  impression  to  atom  and  on  and 
on  to  the  brain,  and  there  read  off  by  that 
mysterious  thing  called  consciousness.  That 
chemistry  is  out  of  date.  We  know  now  by 
established  fact  the  medium  of  communication 
is  not  gross  matter,  but  ether.  We  send 
messages  without  wires — wireless  telegraphy- 
it  passes  through  oceans,  mountains;  nothing 
can  stop  it. 

What  is  the  medium?  Ether.  What  is 
16 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

ether  ?  It  is  not  matter ;  it  fills  stellar  space,  it 
fills  molecular  space,  it  is  not  subject  to  gravita- 
tion. It  is  a  third  something,  neither  matter 
nor  force. 

Don't  you  remember  that  an  old  sage  called 
Paul  wrote,  "You  will  be  buried  with  a  cor- 
ruptible body,  and  you  will  rise  with  an  in- 
corruptible body.  There  is  a  natural  body  and 
a  spiritual  body  "  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  Paul 
anticipated  modern  science  in  that  inspired 
passage.  At  least,  ether  shows  us  we  have  two 
bodies ;  one,  the  gross  material  fit  for  this  planet, 
and  another  which  no  closed  doors  or  windows 
can  shut  in.  You  have  got  the  spiritual  body 
now,  and  that  body  which,  at  last,  science  has 
put  its  finger  on,  is  to  my  mind  the  spiritual 
body  which  will  be  used  by  the  ego  in  that 
spiritual  world  for  personal  manifestation. 

The  verdict  of  history  ?  Look  where  you 
will  see  the  phenomena  of  religion,  religion 
that  spells  three  things — God,  the  soul,  and  im- 
mortality. The  doctrine  of  immortality  is  at 
the  back  of  all  Egyptian  history;  it  built  the 
Pyramids,  decorated  the  tombs,  wrote  the 
"Book  of  the  Dead,"  founded  Thebes,  and  gave 
the  first  poets  their  songs,  and  runs  its  golden 
weft  through  all  its  literature. 

It  is  the  same  everywhere;  unlock  the  mys- 
terious cuneiform  reading  on  the  clay  tablets 
of  Assyria,  Babylon,  and  Chaldea,  and  there  is 

'7 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

practically  only  one  message — life  beyond  the 
grave. 

Is  there  anything  to  match  this?  Tell  me 
this  instinct  for  immortality  is  a  nightmare,  an 
excrescence  bred  of  ignorance.  I  reply  that 
here  is  a  greater  miracle  than  the  one  you  dis- 
place. The  law  of  correspondence  is  broken. 
No;  when  I  find  a  fossil,  and  on  it  I  find  fossil 
fins,  I  rightly  infer  that  the  fossil  was  once  a 
fish,  and  there  must  have  been  water  to  match 
it,  correspond  with  it.  The  eye,  with  its  coats, 
humours,  lens,  and  retina,  is  impossible  without 
light  to  match  it;  the  bird,  with  its  wings  beau- 
tifully formed,  must  have  air  with  buoyancy  to 
match  it.  So  when  I  find  this  instinct  for  im- 
mortality as  universal  as  language,  as  old  as 
human  thought,  as  real  as  consciousness,  as 
deep  as  human  needs,  and  as  high  as  human 
aspiration,  I  reply  it  seems  to  me  it  must  have 
life  beyond  to  match  it,  to  equalise  it,  to  make 
the  music  plain,  and  fill  the  earth  with  law,  and 
the  universe  with  justice. 

We  believe  in  justice ;  we  believe  in  hope ; 
but  if  there  is  no  future  life,  there  can  be  no 
justice  in  the  universe.  The  girl  dies  outraged 
in  the  gutter,  the  betrayer  goes  free,  the  scales 
are  never  adjusted. 

I  believe  in  God,  because  I  believe  in  jus- 
tice, in  love,  and  in  hope.  I  believe  there  is 
something  in  the  universe  which  must  match 

18 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

alien,  vapid,  the  immortality  of  which  can  have 
no  more  meaning  and  interest  for  our  conscious 
Ego  than  the  indestructibility  of  the  atoms  com- 
posing our  mortal  body.  What  value,  what 
interest  can  an  immortality  have  for  me  in  which 
I  should  no  longer  love  what  I  have  loved,  no 
longer  hate  what  I  have  hated,  no  longer  remem- 
ber my  past  life,  my  small  and  great  adventures, 
my  moments  of  joy  and  my  days  of  sorrow,  my 
sweet  and  my  bitter  emotions,  my  ambitions, 
my  yearnings,  my  disappointments,  my  pains, 
and  my  consolations — in  one  word,  all  that  com- 
posed that  personality  the  preservation  of  which 
seemed  so  hugely  important  to  me  ?  In  this  case 
it  is  not  me  that  survives,  the  immortality  of  this 
alien  soul  is  not  my  immortality  and  does  not 
concern  me  in  any  way. 

But  the  first  alternative  is  still  far  worse. 
Suppose  my  immortal  soul  would  really  be  my 
conscious  Ego,  all  the  essentials  of  my  per- 
sonality surviving  the  death  of  my  body.  It 
would  remain  connected  with  everything  that 
was  dear  to  me,  it  would  preserve  all  my  feel- 
ings. Now,  think  of  this  :  Reduced  to  the  state 
of  a  soul  without  organs,  without  means  for 
exercising  the  slightest  action  on  the  material 
world,  I  would  see  my  child  weep  and  would  be 
unable  to  comfort  it;  I  would  accompany  her 
life,  watch  it  in  every  moment,  witness  her  dis- 
tress, her  pains,  her  dangers,  her  despair,  and  I 
27 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

would  be  incapable  of  aiding  her,  helping  her, 
protecting  her,  defending  her,  encouraging  her. 
Why,  this  would  be  a  fiendish  torture,  worse 
than  all  the  torments  attributed  to  hell !  Why, 
annihilation  would  be  an  inestimable  blessing 
compared  with  this  existence  of  a  feeling  but 
paralytic  soul,  impotent  witness  of  all  sufferings, 
a  prisoner,  fettered  and  gagged,  shut  in  in  its 
eternity  and  deprived  of  all  possibility  to  com- 
municate with  all  that  it  loves  more  than  itself. 

Let  us  go  one  step  farther. 

My  Ego  is  composed  of  certain  definite 
notions  or  conceptions.  The  contents  of  its  con- 
sciousness are  the  world  which  it  knows,  are  the 
beings  which  have  always  surrounded  it.  Now 
eternity  means  a  rather  long  time.  All  that  I 
know,  all  that  I  love,  all  that  concerns  or 
interests  me  in  any  way,  will  have  disappeared, 
say,  in  a  couple  of  centuries.  In  two  thousand 
years,  perhaps,  not  even  my  nation  will  exist 
any  longer.  What  interest,  this  globe  of  ours, 
shall  it  then  offer  to  me?  What  will  be  the 
contents  of  that  immortality  which  is  so  fervently 
wished  for  ?  The  soul  will  have  to  fill  itself  with 
other,  new  interests  which  I  cannot  guess.  But 
in  this  case  again  the  soul  will  not  be  my  soul, 
mine  Ego. 

No.  The  immortality  of  the  personality  is 
neither  conceivable  nor  desirable.  Nothingness 
is  more  consoling.  And  all  one  ought  to  desire 

28 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

is  a  death  which  does  not  come  prematurely,  but 
at  the  precise  hour  when  one  has  accomplished 
all  one's  tasks  and  completed  the  circle  of  the 
vital  obligations.  Such  a  death — this  is  my 
innermost  conviction — can  have  no  terror  for 
anybody. 


AFTER  DEATH-WHAT? 

By  T.  CLAYE  SHAW,  M.D.,  F.R.C.P. 

IT  is  pure  speculation  to  indulge  in  ideas  and 
statements  on  this  subject.  Neither  the  Arch- 
bishops nor  the  Pope  can  tell  us  anything  more 
than  we  know  ourselves,  and  that  is  that  we 
know  nothing.  We  do  not  even  know  what  life 
is,  and  all  that  we  can  prove  is  that  under  cer- 
tain circumstances  the  body  can  perform  acts 
and  is  capable  of  showing  what  we  call  mental 
phenomena,  and  that  under  others  it  is  incap- 
able of  these  demonstrations  and  falls  into  a 
desolation,  a  decomposition,  which  we  call 
death,  and  this  we  say  is  a  sign  of  having  lost 
something  which  we  call  life,  which  was  be- 
fore associated  with  it.  Except  through  the 
body,  we  cannot  increase,  diminish,  or  control 
life,  because  it  is  only  a  hypothesis  that  there  is 
such  a  thing,  or  that  it  can  have  a  separate 
existence. 

What  we  do  is  to  follow  authority,  to  believe 
that  there  is  a  future  existence  for  what  is  called 
the  "spiritual  life,"  because  we  are  told  to  do  so 
by  certain  people  who  have  recorded  their  ex- 
perience of  being  the  witnesses  of  certain 

30 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

marvellous  and  miraculous  events  which  hap- 
pened many  years  ago. 

I  cannot  think  that  the  events  connected  with 
the  death  and  resurrection  of  Christ,  as  recorded, 
are  mere  imaginings  or  delusions  or  lies  by 
ingenious  persons,  and  I  find  no  more  difficulty 
in  believing  them  than  I  have  in  understanding 
how  it  is  that  radium  splits  up  into  helion  and 
niton,  or  that  two  gases  like  oxygen  and  hydro- 
gen can  be  made  to  form  water.  I  have  else- 
where shown  that  theories  of  ghosts  are  merely 
the  result  of  subjective  conditions  during  life, 
and  do  not  in  any  way  represent  life  or  spirit 
apart  from  the  body ;  but  I  am  not  going  to  deny 
that  there  is  a  connection  between  the  death  of 
the  body  and  the  further  existence  in  some  form 
of  that  which  constituted  the  living  body, 
simply  because,  whilst,  to  some  degree,  I  under- 
stand the  body,  I  have  yet  not  the  least  concep- 
tion of  the  nature  of  the  other. 

The  nature  of  a  future  life  may  be  altogether 
different  from  what  we  can  imagine ;  in  fact,  we 
have  no  clue  of  any  sort  as  to  its  real  form,  and 
the  material  realisations  of  pure  happiness  which 
are  held  out  by  the  exponents  of  various  creeds 
are  simply  devices  for  tempting  into  their  ranks 
all  those  whose  idea  of  reward  for  self-denial 
and  privation  on  earth  is  pleasure  in  a  future 
state,  whilst  the  penalty  for  transgressing  cer- 
tain other  lines  of  conduct  is  eternal  torture  in 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

another  world,  there  being  all  the  time  no  proof 
of  there  being  another  world. 

All  who  believe  in  the  Bible  must  believe 
in  the  existence  of  another  state  after  bodily 
death.  The  fact  is  there  affirmed,  though  there 
is  no  declaration  of  its  nature,  and  those  who 
refuse  to  be  guided  by  the  Bible  and  who  de- 
clare their  view  of  "after  death — nothingness," 
must  be  left  to  their  own  guidance  and  the 
temporal  laws  of  the  country. 

A  reasonable  follower  of  the  Bible  is  not 
likely  to  go  wrong.  He  has  a  code  of  high 
morality  laid  down  for  him ;  but  there  is  no 
reason  for  saying  that  an  atheist  or  an  agnostic 
is  unable  or  unfit  to  be  a  good  member  of 
society.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  a  man  who 
has  ho  religion  may  be  a  most  excellent  citizen, 
and  even  a  distinguished  man  in  his  avocation, 
because  he  is  capable  of  seeing  that  pains  and 
penalties  await  any  infraction  of  the  social  code, 
but  as  to  what  is  to  happen  to  him  hereafter,  he 
must  be  left  to  his  own  isolation ;  for  just  as  he 
cannot  prove  that  there  is  no  future  state,  so 
are  we  unable  to  prove  either  that  there  is  a 
future  state  or  the  nature  of  it. 

The  holding  of  the  idea  of  a  future  state  is 
a  comfort  to  many.  It  gives  the  support  of 
working  in  a  certain  way  for  a  future  reward.  It 
may  be  a  poor  purpose,  this  working  for  reward 
and  against  punishment,  but  it  appeals  to  many, 

32 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

and  is  doubtless  a  great  determining  factor  in 
critical  circumstances.  Why,  then,  interfere 
with  it  ?  There  is  as  much  "  intellect "  in  believ- 
ing in  a  future  state  as  there  is  in  denying  one ; 
but  as  to  the  kind  of  thing  a  future  state  is,  no 
conception  is  more  than  guesswork. 

Would  it  be  uncharitable  to  hope  that  those 
who  desire  nothingness  will  get  it,  and  that 
those  who  regulate  their  conduct  during  life  in 
accordance  with  the  view  that  they  are  to  fit 
themselves  for  a  future  existence  may  reap  the 
fruit  of  their  belief  in  a  way  they  deserve? 
Whether  there  be  a  future  existence  or  not,  he 
may  be  a  happy  man  who  lives  up  to  a  good 
ideal,  who  is  careful  of  himself  and  does  his 
best  to  help  his  neighbours. 

This  is  rather  a  paltry,  empty  creed,  but  it 
is  all  that  the  self-sufficient  person  can  claim. 
The  strong  man,  rejoicing  in  his  strength,  may 
be  content  with  things  as  they  are,  but  he  is  a 
stronger  man  who  calculates  upon  a  future 
existence,  because,  connecting  his  future  state 
with  his  present  bodily  conduct,  he  is  more  likely 
to  be  careful  of  the  latter  in  order  to  ensure  a 
greater  perfection  in  the  former,  whatever  the 
nature  of  it  may  be. 


33 


OUR   CHANGE  OF   IMMORTALITY 

By  the  late  Monsignor  ROBERT  HUGH  BENSON 


ON  purely  natural  grounds — apart,  that  is  to 
say,  from  the  revelation  that  God  has  made  to 
man  on  the  subject — perhaps  the  strongest  argu- 
ment for  the  immortality  of  the  individual  soul 
is  the  ineradicable  instinct  of  moral  respon- 
sibility. 

It  is  surely  utterly  impossible  to  explain 
away  this  deep  conviction,  felt  by  every 
normal  person,  that  each  man  is  himself  re- 
sponsible for  his  past,  and  will  have  to  face  the 
results  of  his  past  actions,  by  the  theory  that  it 
is  no  more  than  a  kind  of  inherited  social 
instinct.  How,  therefore,  unless  personal 
identity  be  preserved,  can  this  conviction  be 
justified  ? 

A  second  reason,  again  drawn  from  experi- 
ence quite  apart  from  revelation,  for  believing  in 
personal  immortality  may  be  found  in  the  argu- 
ment from  love. 

Human  love  is,  by  common  consent,  the 
most  sublime  of  human  emotions;  the  relation- 
ships we  form  in  this  life  are  not  only  sacred, 
but  fundamental;  and  it  is  their  deepest 

34 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

characteristic  that  they  demand  continuance. 
The  love  of  friends,  the  love  between  parents 
and  children — these  things  cannot  be  explained 
away,  as  materialist  philosophers  sometimes  pre- 
tend to  explain  away  the  love  between  husband 
and  wife,  as  merely  physical  in  their  origin  and 
end.  Yet,  if  personal  immortality  be  a  dream 
only,  these  profound  emotions  and  relationships 
are  completely  deceptive.  For  in  their  very 
essence  they  demand  permanence  and  eternal 
renewal. 

A  third  natural  argument  for  personal  im- 
mortality is  slowly  emerging  from  the  researches 
of  psychologists.  These  are  beginning  to  estab- 
lish the  fact  that  in  the  hour  of  dissolution, 
when  mortal  faculties  are  beginning  to  fail,  and 
the  senses  become  obscured,  certain  activities — 
and  those  emphatically  not  such  activities  as  may 
be  compared  to  the  leap  of  a  dying  candle  flame 
—begin  to  reveal  themselves. 

It  is,  for  example,  entirely  accepted  by  all 
who  have  given  thought  to  the  subject,  whether 
by  personal  investigation  or  by  the  study  of 
evidence,  that  at  or  about  the  time  of  death 
examples  continually  and  frequently  take  place  of 
what  is  known  as  "telepathic  communication" 
between  the  dying  person  and  those  with  whom 
he  is  in  mental  sympathy. 

Many  theories  have  been  formed  on  the  sub- 
ject, but  at  least  there  emerges  from  them  all 

35 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

the  solid  fact  that  certain  of  the  deepest  faculties 
of  man,  so  far  from  sharing  in  the  dissolution 
and  failure  that  accompany  the  death  of  the 
body,  are  actually  released  by  such  dissolution 
into  an  activity  never  before  experienced. 

What  conclusion  can  be  drawn  from  these 
facts  except  that  the  mortality  is  not  entire — that 
the  deepest  identity  of  a  man,  that  is  to  say,  can 
energise  and  exist  apart  from  his  body  ? 

For  Christians,  of  course,  the  question  is 
settled.  It  is  quite  impossible  for  anyone  who 
accepts  the  Resurrection  of  Christ  as  a  fact  to 
be  content  with  vague  doctrines  of  "absorption 
into  the  Soul  of  the  World,"  or  of  that 
Pantheism  towards  which  the  non-Christian 
thought  of  the  present  day  is  so  rapidly  moving. 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

of  the  writers  in  this  book,  "Death  means  final 
extinction  of  consciousness,"  but  faith  in  what 
lies  beyond  this  present  world  of  sights  and 
sounds  is  with  me  a  vital  part  of  self-conscious- 
ness. "I  know,"  said  the  Patriarch  of  old, 
"that  my  Redeemer  liveth  .  .  .  and  though 
after  my  skin  worms  destroy  this  body,  yet  in 
my  flesh  shall  I  see  God." 

Is  not  the  experience  expressed  in  those  all- 
familiar  words  a  part  of  every  man's  self- 
consciousness?  In  the  case  of  this  man  Job, 
his  primal  belief  concerning  physical  death  was 
not  the  result  of  any  argument,  but  it  was  a 
part  of  his  rational  and  conscious  life.  He 
could  not  get  away  from  it.  I  doubt  if  any 
man  is  actually  able  to  rid  himself  completely 
of  this  belief.  Dr.  Max  Nordau  himself,  seems 
to  me  to  admit  this  consciousness  of  the 
"Hereafter"  when  he  bemoans  the  fact  that 
men  shrink  back  from  the  notion  of  "Nothing- 
ness after  Death."  To  him  it  is  a  piteous  spec- 
tacle to  see  men  "desperately  clinging  to  the 
fond  self-deception  of  a  continuation  of  some 
sort  of  life  after  death."  But  the  fact  remains 
that  throughout  the  ages  there  has  been  such  a 
spectacle.  "Looking  at  the  religion  of  the  lower 
races  as  a  whole,"  says  Dr.  Tylor  in  his  "Primi- 
tive Culture,"  "we  shall  at  least  not  be  ill- 
advised  in  taking  as  one  of  the  general  and 
principal  elements  the  doctrine  of  the  soul's 

45 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

future  life."  This  is  a  statement  that  seems 
to  be  beyond  dispute.  The  answer  of  all  the 
ages  is  not  "Nothing,"  but  "Something"  after 
Death. 

Even  the  pagan  attitude  was  affirmative 
rather  than  negative.  The  philosophy  of  the 
king's  counsellor  in  the  court  of  the  old  Saxon 
dynasty  is  very  suggestive  of  this.  It  is  told 
in  connection  with  the  narrative  of  the  conver- 
sion of  King  Edward  of  Northumbria,  accord- 
ing to  the  historian.  When  missionaries  of 
Augustine  came  and  waited  before  the  Saxon 
monarch  and  his  lords,  they  were  at  first  inclined 
to  repudiate  them  and  their  doctrine.  At  last  one 
of  the  counsellors  arose  and  said  :  "Thou  know- 
est,  O  King,  that  ofttimes  on  a  winter's  night, 
when  we  are  assembled  within  this  dimly  lighted 
hall  to  do  business,  a  swallow  will  come  from 
the  night,  pass  from  darkness  into  darkness 
again.  So  it  is  with  the  human  soul.  We 
come  we  know  not  whence,  and  we  go  we  know 
not  whither.  If,  therefore,  these  new  teachers 
can  tell  us  aught  concerning  whence  we  come 
and  whither  we  go,  let  us  hear  them." 

"  Final  extinction  of  consciousness "  was 
evidently  not  acceptable  even  in  pagan  belief. 

Of  course,  a  man  may  set  himself  against 
all  such  beliefs  in  the  "Hereafter."  He  may 
make  believe  not  to  believe,  but  he  does  not 
thereby  rid  himself  of  this  universal  conscious- 

46 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

ness.  His  rational  self  wars  against  his  unbelief. 
His  attitude  of  unbelief  is  not  only  un-Biblical, 
but  wholly  unphilosophical  as  well. 

Socrates,  when  asked  where  he  would  choose 
to  be  buried,  made  reply  :  "Bury  me  where  you 
will,  if  you  can  catch  me."  There  you  have  the 
wisdom  of  the  wisest  of  ancient  philosophers. 
Like  Job  of  old,  he  declined  to  entertain  the 
conception  that  "Death  was  the  extinction  of 
consciousness."  Though  after  the  flesh  worms 
destroy  the  body  was  a  fact  present  to  the  mind 
of  Socrates  as  well  as  to  that  of  Job.  But  he 
did  not  infer  from  it  that  there  was  "Nothing- 
ness after  Death." 

To  my  mind  it  is  not  only  utterly  un- 
Biblical  and  unphilosophical,  but  also  irrational 
to  give  Death  the  importance  in  life  that  is  in- 
volved in  the  denial  of  the  "Hereafter."  Doubt- 
less Death  is  a  crisis  in  so  far  as  it  involves 
change  and  transition.  But  it  surely  is  not  the 
last  law  of  life.  "The  maid  sleepeth,"  said  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.  Could  any  view  be  more 
delightfully  suggestive? 

"  Is  immortality  really  something  so  ardently 
to  be  yearned  after?"  says  Dr.  Nordau. 

In  answer  to  that,  I  can  only  say  for  myself 
it  is  the  most  ardent  desire  of  my  life. 

When  we  formulate  our  doctrine  concern- 
ing the  "Hereafter"  it  is  not  of  ourselves  alone 
we  must  think,  but  of  those  who  love  us.  "Lead, 

47 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

kindly  light,"  is  a  bewildering  hymn  to  me,  but 
I  shall  never  cease  to  bless  the  writer  of  it  if 
only  for  those  lines  : 

"And  with  the  morn  those  angel  faces  smile, 
Which  I  have  loved  long  since  and  lost 
awhile." 

Take  away  this  hope  of  the  "Hereafter," 
and  what  is  left  for  us  but  despair?  As  the 
Apostle  says  :  "  Let  us  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry, 
for  to-morrow  we  die."  But  that  is  a  philosophy 
that  cuts  the  nerve  of  every  noble  effort  and 
heroic  achievement  in  life.  We  may  as  well 
write  "  Ichabod "  over  the  national  life  if  this 
belief  is  to  prevail.  I  recently  had  the  privi- 
lege of  addressing  an  audience  of  working  men 
on  the  subject  of  "Self-culture,"  and  at  the  close 
one  who  was  present  declared  that  he  did  not 
consider  the  subject  had  any  meaning  for  him, 
inasmuch  as  he  believed  in  "the  extinction  of 
consciousness  after  Death."  I  replied  that  I 
quite  endorsed  his  view.  To  my  mind,  as  to 
his,  it  seemed  unnecessary  to  consider  the  ques- 
tion of  self-culture  if  a  man  regarded  himself 
as  nothing  better  than  the  brute  that  perisheth. 


THE  FAMILIAR  UNKNOWN 

By  A.  P.  SINNETT,  the  well-known  Occultist 

To  everyone  who  may,  like  myself,  have  been 
for  half  a  long  lifetime  in  familiar  touch  with 
those  conditions  of  human  life  lying  beyond  the 
change  commonly  called  death,  there  is  some- 
thing inexpressibly  ludicrous  in  the  grave  dis- 
cussion presented  in  this  little  book  as  to 
whether  there  is  or  is  not  any  continuity  of  con- 
sciousness for  us  after  we  have  each  done  with 
our  respective  physical  bodies.  The  matter  has 
nothing  to  do  with  opinions  or  arguments.  For 
vast  multitudes  all  over  the  civilised  world  the 
continuity  of  life  in  the  case  of  friends  who  have 
passed  on — the  invariable  operation  of  the  laws 
which  govern  the  immediate  future — is  personal 
knowledge  gained  by  the  exercise  of  faculties  of 
superphysical  sense  which,  though  not  yet  exer- 
cised by  all,  are  so  frequently  available  that 
all  who  have  enough  intelligence  to  do  so  can 
profit  by  them.  One  of  the  writers  says : 
"Physical  science  can  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  question  one  way  or  the  other,  as  conscious- 
ness lies  beyond  its  domain."  True,  as  the 
words  stand,  but  leave  out  the  word  "physical," 

49 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

and  the  statement  is  grotesquely  untrue.  Super- 
physical  science  is  just  as  scientific  as  that  which 
relates  merely  to  the  low  aspects  of  natural  law, 
and  Dr.  Max  Nordau's  comic  impudence  in  de- 
scribing as  "a  vain  and  inane  delusion"  what 
multitudes  of  better-informed  people  know  from 
their  own  experience  to  be  a  fact,  reminds  me 
of  what  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  somewhere  once  wrote, 
to  the  effect  that  in  these  days  an  expression  of 
"disbelief"  in  clairvoyance  was  not  so  much  a 
declaration  of  opinion  as  an  exhibition  of  ignor- 
ance. 

The  subject  of  what  happens  after  death  need 
no  longer  be  concerned  with  arguments  based  on 
reason,  though  these  are  overwhelmingly  in 
favour  of  continued  life  in  worlds  beyond  the 
physical,  since  we  have  definite  testimony  to 
work  with  from  the  large  numbers  who  now,  as 
human  evolution  goes  on,  are  exercising  the 
superphysical  senses  to  which  the  phenomena 
of  the  next  world  are  as  apparent  as  those 
of  this  one  to  the  limited  comprehension  of 
people  like  Dr.  Max  Nordau. 

To  begin  with,  in  the  middle  of  the  last 
century  superior  wisdom  guiding  the  evolution 
of  human  intelligence  started  Spiritualism  to 
give  the  current  generation  proof  of  a  kind  it 
could  understand  that  there  was  a  life  after  this, 
and  another  plane  of  consciousness.  Millions 
availed  themselves  of  the  opportunities  afforded, 

5° 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

and  other  millions  were  silly  enough  to  think 
that  because  a  fringe  of  imposture  gathered 
round  the  manifestation,  there  was  no  reality 
within  the  fringe.  But  Spiritualism  was  not 
designed  to  do  more  than  establish  the  broad 
fact.  Later  developments  led  to  the  expansion 
of  Occult  Science,  which  showed  how  it  was 
possible  to  range  the  next  plane  of  existence 
while  still  in  the  body,  and  bring  back  definite 
information.  A  vast  envelope  of  subtle  matter 
surrounds  this  earth.  Physical  senses  cannot 
apprehend  it,  but  finer  senses  rapidly  develop- 
ing among  us  do.  That  is  the  next  world  in 
which  we  all  of  us  first  awaken  after  shedding 
the  physical  vehicle  of  consciousness,  and  all 
who  are  earnest  in  pursuit  of  knowledge  will  find 
abundant  satisfaction  in  the  literature  of  Theo- 
sophy,  which  has  grown  to  such  magnificent 
proportions  during  the  last  thirty  years. 

Life  "beyond  the  grave,"  to  use  an  old- 
fashioned  phrase,  is  much  more  certain  than 
life  beyond  the  Channel  for  all  crossing  over 
from  Dover  to  Calais,  and  many  of  us  know 
much  more  about  it  than  the  untravelled 
majority  know  about  France.  But  to  go  into 
detail  it  is  necessary  to  write  books  (as  I  have 
done  several  times),  not  merely  to  contribute  a 
few  remarks  to  a  controversy  which  ought  to  be 
regarded  as  no  less  out  of  date  than  a  dispute 
as  to  whether  the  earth  is  round  or  flat. 

51 


MY  BELIEF 

By  ELLEN  THORNEYCROFT  FOWLER, 

the  well-known   Authoress 

MY  belief  as  to  the  future  state  is  summed  up  in 
the  last  verse  of  Richard  Baxter's  perfect  hymn  : 

"  My  knowledge  of  that  life  is  small, 

The  eye  of  faith  is  dim ; 
But  'tis  enough  that  Christ  knows  all, 
And  I  shall  be  with  Him." 

That  is  all   I   have  to  go  upon ;  and  it  is 
enough. 


THE  UNDYING  SOUL 

By  the  Rev.  A.  C.  DIXON,  B.A.,  D.D.  (of  the 
Metropolitan  Tabernacle) 

DOES  the  invisible  part  of  man  continue  to 
exist  after  the  visible  part  has  turned  to  dust? 
Every  man  is  his  body  plus  something  more, 
and  the  something  more  is  greater  than  his 
body.  Without  any  fine-spun  definitions  we 
will  consider  the  soul  as  meaning  that  part  of  us 
which  thinks,  loves,  rejoices,  suffers,  approves 
the  right  and  condemns  the  wrong. 

Ralph  Wells,  in  defining  the  soul  to  a  class 
of  ragged  children,  said,  "The  soul  is  that 
which  thinks,  loves  and  feels."  "Yes,"  said 
a  little  ragged  girl,  "and  aches  so."  There 
are  times  when  the  soul  does  ache,  and  there 
are  times  when  it  mounts  up  on  wings  of  joy. 

The  immortality  of  the  soul  is,  first  of  all, 
suggested  by  Nature.  We  plant  a  seed  in  the 
springtime,  and  in  autumn  we  reap  the  same 
kind  of  seed.  The  thing  that  continues  in  the 
seed  is  the  vital  force,  the  life.  The  particles 
may  be  different,  but  the  life  is  the  same.  Take 
out  the  life,  and  it  is  all  dead  matter.  The  re- 
appearance of  this  life  in  bud  and  leaf  and  flower 

53 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

at  least  suggests  that  the  life  mental,   moral, 
and  spiritual  in  us  may  continue  after  death. 

The  fact  that  the  soul  is  not  seen  is  no  proof 
against  its  existence,  but  rather  presumption  in 
favour  of  its  continuance,  for  there  is  no  micro- 
scope which  has  yet  revealed  to  the  eye  the  life 
of  the  seed. 

It  is  said  that  while  Dr.  James  Armstrong 
was  preaching  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
an  atheistic  physician  rose  and  asked  him  if 
he  had  ever  seen  the  soul.  "No,"  replied 
Armstrong,  "I  have  never  seen  a  soul." 

The  physician  continued,  "Did  you  ever 
hear  a  soul ?  " 

"No." 

"  Did  you  ever  taste  a  soul  ?  " 

"No." 

"  Did  you  ever  smell  a  soul  ?  " 

"No." 

"Did  you  ever  feel  a  soul?" 

"Yes,  thank  God,"  replied  the  pious 
preacher. 

"Well,"  said  the  physician,  "there  are  four 
of  the  five  senses  against  one  that  there  is  a 
soul." 

Dr.  Armstrong  then  asked,  "Did  you  ever 
see  a  pain  ?  " 

The  physician  had  to  confess,  "No." 

"  Did  you  ever  hear  a  pain  ?  " 

"No." 

54 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

"Did  you  ever  taste  a  pain?'* 

"No." 

"  Did  you  ever  smell  a  pain  ?  " 

"No." 

"Well,  then,  there  are  four  senses  against 
one  that  there  is  pain,  and  yet  you  know  there 
is  pain.  So  I  know  there  is  a  soul." 

The  preacher  might  have  asked  the  doctor, 
"Did  you  ever  see  your  brain,  or  smell  your 
brain,  or  taste  your  brain,  or  hear  your  brain  ?  " 

"No." 

"Well,  there  are  four  senses  against  one  that 
you  have  any  brain."  The  invisible  part  of  us 
is  the  real  part.  The  unseen  is  the  eternal.  The 
body  is  the  casket  which  holds  the  jewel  of  the 
soul. 

Again,  the  immortality  of  the  soul  is  taught 
by  universal  consciousness.  The  rude  savage 
believes  in  a  future  state.  The  Indian  buries 
with  his  comrade  the  blanket,  the  bow  and 
arrow,  believing  that  he  will  need  these  things 
in  the  happy  hunting  grounds  of  the  future. 
Even  modern  infidelity  does  not  deny  it. 
When  the  champion  blasphemer  of  America 
stood  over  the  corpse  of  his  brother,  he  spoke 
of  the  star  of  hope  which  the  soul  sees  in  the 
night.  The  heart  is  sometimes  wiser  than  the 
head. 

In  order  to  express  his  hostility  to  Chris- 
tianity, one  may  in  a  moment  of  weakness  de- 
E  55 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

clare  that  he  expects  to  die  like  a  dog,  and  that 
will  be  the  last  of  him ;  but  if  you  were  to  look 
into  his  face  and  tell  him  that  you  believe  there 
is  nothing  in  him  higher  than  you  find  in  the 
dog,  he  would  be  insulted.  And  yet  if  he  con- 
tinues to  assert  that  he  does  not  belong  to  a 
higher  grade  than  the  dog,  he  is  apt  to  de- 
generate into  a  dog-like  character. 

Mr.  Spurgeon  tells  of  an  English  pastor  who, 
after  he  had  preached  on  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  was  approached  by  one  of  his  parishioners, 
who  told  him  that  he  did  not  believe  in  the 
teaching  of  his  sermon.  "There  is  no  differ- 
ence," he  said,  "between  the  man  and  the 
dog." 

"Well,"  replied  the  preacher,  "I  really 
thought  that  I  was  furnishing  food  for  people 
who  had  souls;  if  I  had  known  that  there  was  a 
dog  among  them,  I  might  have  brought  bones 
for  him."  The  man  did  not  enjoy  this  personal 
and  practical  application  of  his  own  admission. 

Suggested  by  Nature,  taught  by  universal 
consciousness,  the  immortality  of  the  soul  is 
confirmed  by  observation.  If  you  will  turn  to 
any  first-class  book  on  mental  philosophy,  you 
will  find  instances  in  which  memory  has  grown 
stronger  while  the  body  has  grown  weaker. 
There  are  cases  on  record  where  page  after 
page  in  foreign  languages,  long  forgotten,  have 
been  repeated  by  men  on  beds  of  sickness.  A 

56 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

friend  told  me  that,  when  he  was  thrown  from 
a  horse  and  almost  killed,  the  panorama  of  his 
past  life  came  before  him ;  impressions  that  had 
faded  from  memory,  while  he  was  physically 
strong,  were  revived  during  the  time  of  weak- 
ness. 

So  imagination  is  sometimes  most  brilliant 
when  the  body  is  weakest.  I  have  known  at 
least  two  or  three  men  whose  reason  was  as 
vigorous  just  a  moment  before  they  died  as  it 
ever  was  in  their  days  of  physical  strength. 

If  you  have  ever  been  in  Mammoth  Cave, 
Kentucky,  and  stood  over  the  River  Styx,  you 
will  remember  that  it  disappears  under  the 
cavern  walls.  Up  to  the  very  point  of  disap- 
pearance the  current  is  swift.  Is  there  a  man 
on  earth  foolish  enough  to  suppose  that  there 
is  no  river  after  the  swift  current  has  disap- 
peared ?  Does  he  not  believe,  with  a  conviction 
that  amounts  to  certainty,  that  the  river,  though 
hidden,  continues  to  flow  on  ?  And  when  up 
to  the  point  of  dying  we  find  memory,  imagina- 
tion, reason,  love  and  conscience  as  strong,  if 
not  stronger,  than  ever  before,  is  there  not  a 
presumption  which  amounts  to  a  conviction  of 
certainty  that  these  faculties  of  the  soul  will 
continue  to  live  after  the  body  dies?  In  fact, 
that  the  memory  is  sometimes  strongest  when 
the  body  is  weakest  goes  rather  to  suggest  that 
the  body  is  a  weight  which  the  memory  has  to 

57 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

carry,  and  when  it  gets  rid  of  the  body  memory 
will  assert  its  full  strength. 

The  immortality  of  the  soul,  suggested  by 
Nature,  taught  by  universal  consciousness,  and 
confirmed  by  observation,  is  finally  established 
by  revelation.  The  words  "immortal"  and 
"immortality"  occur  six  times  in  the  Bible. 
They  are  two  words  in  the  Greek,  one  of  which 
means  "incorruptible"  and  the  other  "death- 
less." The  word  meaning  "incorruptible"  is 
applied  to  God  Himself  in  i  Tim.  i.  17,  and  is 
so  translated  by  the  revisers.  In  Rom.  ii.  7  are 
the  words,  "To  them  who  by  patient  continuance 
in  well-doing  seek  for  glory  and  honour  and  im- 
mortality, eternal  life."  The  revision  correctly 
renders  it  "incorruption,"  which  we  are  to  seek 
diligently. 

The  word  which  means  "  deathlessness " 
occurs  in  i  Tim.  vi.  16,  and  refers  to  the  Lord 
Jesus,  "Who  only  hath  immortality,  dwelling 
in  the  light  which  no  man  can  approach  unto." 
The  Deity  of  Jesus,  dwelling  in  this  unapproach- 
able light,  cannot  die.  He  took  upon  Him  the 
humanity  which  could  die,  but  His  Deity  is 
deathlessness. 

This  Scripture  does  not  even  intimate  that 
wicked  men  will  cease  to  exist  after  death.  "It 
is  appointed  unto  men  once  to  die,  and  after  this 
the  judgment."  God  cannot  die  and  live  again, 
but  man  can. 

§8 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

The  difference  between  immortality  and 
eternal  life  is  clearly  intimated  in  these  Scrip- 
tures. Immortality  means  everlasting  existence, 
but  eternal  life  is  not  eternal  existence.  Dead 
things  exist.  I  can  imagine  a  piece  of  steel 
existing  a  million  years,  but  after  the  million 
years  have  passed  it  will  be  as  dead  as  it  is  now. 
Corpses  exist.  Men  dead  in  trespasses  and  in 
sins  on  this  side  of  the  grave  exist,  and  they 
will  exist  after  death.  One  does  not  begin  really 
to  live  until  he  has  accepted  Christ;  but  he 
exists. 

Eternal  life  is  a  present  possession,  not  a 
future  continuity.  "He  that  believeth  on  the 
Son  hath  everlasting  life."  Write  the  little 
word  HATH  in  capital  letters,  for  eternal  life 
is  in  the  present  tense.  It  is  the  gift  of  God 
through  Jesus  Christ.  Immortality  was  im- 
parted when  God  created  man  in  His  own  image. 
Sin  brought  death,  which  is  separation  from 
God,  but  it  did  not  bring  non-existence.  Man 
continued  to  exist  after  he  had  sinned.  To  say 
that  the  words  "perish,"  "die,"  "destruction" 
mean  annihilation  is  to  speak  unscripturally  and 
unscientifically.  Science  knows  no  annihila- 
tion ;  it  simply  recognises  changes  of  form  and 
substance.  Death  does  not  bring  about  anni- 
hilation of  the  body.  We  keep  it  several  days 
after  death,  and  tenderly  lay  it  away  beneath  the 
flowers. 

59 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

Separation  from  God,  Who  is  the  source  of 
life,  is  the  death  of  the  soul  in  time  and  eternity. 
Hence  we  are  told  in  2  Thess.  i.  9  that  the 
wicked  "shall  be  punished  with  everlasting 
destruction  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord,  and 
from  the  glory  of  His  power." 

In  the  parable  of  the  rich  man  and  Lazarus 
(Luke  xvi.)  it  is  made  plain  that  reason, 
memory  and  imagination  continue  to  exist  after 
the  death  of  the  body.  The  rich  man  in  Hades 
uses  the  word  "therefore";  he  reasons. 
Abraham  said  to  him,  "Son,  remember."  And 
his  request  that  Lazarus  shall  be  sent  back  to 
earth,  to  rise  from  the  dead  and  startle  his 
brethren  into  repentance,  shows  that  imagina- 
tion still  exists.  This  testimony  of  Jesus  that 
the  reason,  memory  and  imagination  of  the 
wicked  continue  to  exist  after  death  is  final,  and 
settles  the  question  once  for  all. 


60 


THE  MISBELIEFS  OF  RELIGION 

By  Sir  HIRAM  S.  MAXIM,  C.E.,  M.E. 

THERE  is  not  one  little  particle  of  evidence  to 
show  that  we  live  after  we  die,  in  the  sense  that 
preachers  would  have  us  believe. 

Mankind,  like  all  other  animals  and  plants, 
has  been  developed  into  his  present  condition  by 
natural  selection  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest 
for  the  environment  in  which  he  finds  himself. 
Small  changes  in  body  and  brain,  going  on  for 
vast  periods  of  time,  have  produced  the  man  of 
to-day,  but  it  should  not  be  supposed  that  these 
changes  and  developments  have  stopped.  Im- 
portant changes  are  now  taking  place  in  the 
brain  of  man ;  he  is  developing  his  thinking 
powers,  and  as  time  goes  on  he  will  waste  less 
of  his  time  and  money  in  propitiating  and 
making  peace  with  the  unseen  phantoms  of  the 
air.  It  certainly  is  not  difficult  for  us  to  under- 
stand that  the  man  who  thought  the  most  of  his 
life,  and  had  the  greatest  dread  of  death,  especi- 
ally in  the  early  ages,  would  be  the  one  who  stood 
the  best  chance  of  surviving  and  of  propagating 
his  species — that  is,  men  like  himself. 

Man's  passionate  love  of  women  and  chil- 
61 


What  Happens  After  Death?]] 

dren,  and  his  horror  of  death,  became  intensified 
as  time  went  on.  He  could  not  bear  the  idea 
that  death  was  the  end  of  all.  "The  wish  was 
the  father  of  the  thought."  In  human  affairs, 
wherever  a  great  want  manifests  itself,  a  remedy 
is  sure  to  be  forthcoming,  and  in  this  case  the 
quack  doctor  of  religion  appeared  on  the  scene. 
He  was  quite  ready  to  deal  out  everlasting  life 
and  happiness  in  another  world  after  death  for  a 
consideration,  and  at  the  same  time  to  consign 
those  who  refused  to  take  his  medicine  and  pay 
for  it  to  everlasting  torments  of  the  most  excruci- 
ating description  in  a  fire  and  brimstone  hell. 

As  ages  passed,  other  doctors  of  religion 
modified  and  elaborated  their  doctrines,  until  an 
extremely  complicated  and  contradictory  system 
was  evolved — a  religion  so  extremely  ridiculous 
and  impossible  that  it  required  a  lot  of  faith  to 
believe  it.  The  result  was  that  thinking  men  of 
intelligence  could  not  accept  the  foolish  and 
absurd  dogmas  of  the  priests. 

This  was  a  serious  trouble,  but  it  was  even- 
tually overcome  in  a  very  thorough  and  effective 
manner.  The  priests  killed  off  the  unbelievers, 
generally  by  burning  them  alive. 

This  drastic  treatment  put  a  check  upon 
thinking,  and  stopped  the  growth  of  the  human 
mind  for  more  than  a  thousand  years. 

Religion  was  booming  from  the  fourth  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  It  was  a  splendid  business — 

62 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

in  fact,  an  ideal  business.  The  priests  were  well 
paid,  lived  lives  of  luxury,  and  did  not  have  to 
deliver  the  goods.  The  result  was  that  the  pro- 
fession became  overcrowded,  and  new  means 
were  invented  to  get  more  money  out  of  the  faith- 
ful. The  invention  of  Purgatory  and  the  sale 
of  indulgences  brought  immense  sums  into  the 
Church. 

Historians  tell  us  that  between  the  fourth  and 
eighteenth  century  more  than  a  thousand  millions 
of  mankind  lost  their  lives  in  Europe,  Asia 
Minor,  and  Northern  Africa  on  account  of  re- 
ligion. This  dreadful  period  of  our  history  is 
now  referred  to  as  the  Dark  Ages. 

Fortunately  for  man,  the  priests  quarrelled 
among  themselves,  and  this  gave  the  human 
mind  a  chance  to  develop  and  get  rid  of  some 
of  the  most  bothersome  superstitions.  I  have 
lately  read  an  article  on  this  subject  which  com- 
pares Christianity  with  the  older  religions  of  the 
world,  and  would  have  us  believe  that  it  is  more 
worthy  to  endure,  because  it  teaches  loving- 
kindness. 

Nothing  could  be  farther  from  the  truth  than 
this  ridiculous  statement.  Christianity  has  been, 
without  doubt,  the  worst  and  the  wickedest  in- 
stitution that  ever  afflicted  a  suffering  world.  It 
has  destroyed  vastly  more  lives,  and  caused  in- 
finitely more  human  suffering,  than  all  the  other 
religions  that  the  world  has  ever  known. 

63 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

While  in  Paris  some  years  ago  I  had  the 
honour  of  dining  with  one  of  the  partners  of  Mr. 
Andrew  Carnegie;  Viva  Kananda,  the  learned 
Hindu  philosopher,  was  also  one  of  the  guests. 
A  lady  who  was  present  asked  him  the  question  : 
"What  becomes  of  us  after  death?  "  His  reply 
was  simple  and  to  the  point :  "  Madam,  I  do  not 
know;  I  have  never  been  dead."  She  said  to  me 
that  one  would  have  supposed  that  so  learned  a 
man  with  such  a  reputation  would  have  been 
able  to  answer  this  simple  question.  I  told  her 
that  any  little  ecclesiastical  fledgeling  or  Salva- 
tion Army  captain  would  have  been  able  to  give 
her  a  definite  reply  at  once,  but  had  the  learned 
Hindu  done  the  same  she  might  have  turned  on 
him  and  asked  :  "  How  do  you  know  ?  " 

I  proclaim  myself  the  Pope  of  my  own  re- 
ligion. This  is  a  material  world  in  which  we 
live.  All  the  matter  that  goes  to  make  up  our 
bodies,  like  all  other  matter,  is  eternal ;  it  has 
always  existed,  and  will  always  exist.  Remove 
all  matter  from  the  universe  and  we  should  have 
only  an  infinitely  cold  and  an  infinitely  dark 
vacuum.  As  far  as  the  soul,  the  mind,  or  the 
spiritual  part  is  concerned,  this,  like  electricity,  is 
only  a  condition  of  matter ;  it  is  not  eternal  in  the 
same  sense  that  matter  is.  It  has  been  trans- 
mitted to  us  by  our  parents,  and  we,  on  our  part, 
are  able  to  transmit  it  to  our  children ;  so  we  live 
again  in  our  descendants. 

64 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

The  unfortunates  of  the  race  who  fail  to  pass 
their  soul  on  to  the  next  generation  are  for  ever 
lost;  with  them  death  indeed  ends  all.  They 
will  not  live  again  in  the  minds  or  souls  of  de- 
scendants, neither  will  they  descend  into  a  fire 
and  brimstone  hell,  simply  because  this  ingeni- 
ous invention  of  the  priests,  which  has  enabled 
the  priests  to  live  off  the  stupidly  pious,  has  no 
real  existence. 


DEATH  IS  NOT  THE  END ! 

By  Sir  ROBERT  ANDERSON,  K.C.B.,  B.A.,  LL.D. 

"THE  nearer  I  approach  death  I  seem  to  gain  a 
glimpse  of  the  shore  and  to  be,  at  last,  about  to 
sail  into  harbour  after  a  long  voyage."  Such 
was  the  reverie  of  Cicero,  the  great  pagan 
philosopher,  2,000  years  ago.  And  he  went  on 
to  quote  the  following  words  of  Cyrus  the  Elder 
on  his  death-bed  :  "  Do  not  suppose,  my  dearest 
sons,  that  when  I  shall  have  left  you  I  shall 
exist  nowhere,  or  lose  my  being,  for  not  even 
while  I  remained  with  you  did  you  see  my  soul, 
yet  you  inferred  from  my  own  conduct  that  it  was 
in  the  body;  be  assured,  therefore,  that  its  ex- 
istence is  all  the  same,  even  though  you  will 
continue  not  to  see  it." 

Do  not  some  of  the  contributions  to  this 
symposium  compare  very  unfavourably  with  the 
thoughts  and  words  of  classic  paganism  ?  There 
are  only  two  books  from  which  we  can  learn  any- 
thing respecting  the  future  and  the  unseen- 
Nature  and  Revelation.  And  those  grand  men, 
the  great  philosophers  of  ancient  paganism,  at- 
tained to  all  that  in  this  sphere  Nature  can 

66 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

supply.  But  is  this  the  limit  of  our  knowledge 
in  Christian  England? 

If  all  who  are  afflicted  with  blindness  agreed 
to  deny  the  existence  of  the  sun,  should  we  con- 
sent to  treat  its  existence  as  an  open  question  ? 
And  the  denials  of  agnostics  and  infidels  cannot 
be  allowed  to  discredit  our  belief  in  the  Bible  as 
a  Divine  revelation.  Nor  can  we  forget  the 
manner  in  which  the  revelation  is  accredited. 
"John  Stuart  Mill  observed  that  mankind  cannot 
be  too  often  reminded  that  there  was  once  a 
man  of  the  name  of  Socrates.  Still  more  im- 
portant is  it  to  remind  mankind  again  and  again 
that  a  man  of  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  once 
stood  in  their  midst."  These  words  are  quoted 
from  Dr.  Harnack,  the  greatest  of  living  rational- 
ists ;  and  they  represent  the  sort  of  teaching  that 
is  common  nowadays  in  many  a  qiiasi-Christian 
pulpit.  But  how  different  the  faith  of  the 
Christian  !  "We  know  that  the  Son  of  God  is 
come  " ;  and  the  inspired  record  of  His  teaching 
is  an  end  of  controversy  on  every  subject  which 
falls  within  it.  And  this  being  so,  we  are  not 
left  to  grope  in  darkness  for  a  solution  of  the 
question,  "What  happens  to  us  when  we  die  ?  " 

Beginning  with  the  Latin  Fathers,  theolo- 
gians have  claimed  to  anticipate  "the  judgment 
of  the  great  Assize "  respecting  the  eternal 
destiny  both  of  individuals  and  of  races  and 
classes  of  men.  But  what  concerns  us  here  is 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

the  teaching,  not  of  theology,  but  of  the  Son  of 
God.  And  while  the  Bible  is  not  designed  to 
solve  academic  questions,  its  teaching  is  full  and 
clear  in  respect  of  all  that  we  are  concerned  to 
know.  Within  that  category  falls  the  question, 
"What  happens  to  us  when  we  die?"  and  the 
answer  given  to  it  is  explicit.  At  death  the 
righteous  pass  into  a  condition  of  conscious 
happiness,  and  the  unrighteous  of  conscious 
misery. 

Who  is  righteous,  and  who  unrighteous? 
That  is  not  the  question  now  before  us;  and  a 
discussion  of  it  would  be  deemed  unsuitable  in 
the  pages  of  this  little  book.  But  the  fact  that 
at  death  men  do  not  pass  out  of  existence,  but 
into  a  new  condition  of  existence,  is  accredited 
by  Him  Who  is  both  the  Saviour  and  the  Judge, 
and  Who  declared  expressly  that  all  His  teaching 
was  Divine.  The  answer  to  our  problem,  there- 
fore, is  no  matter  of  mere  opinion  or  of  guess- 
work. "God  Who  in  times  past  spake  unto  the 
fathers  by  the  prophets,  hath  in  these  last  days 
spoken  unto  us  by  His  Son."  This  is  no  mere 
conjecture;  "We  know  that  the  Son  of  God  has 
come." 

And  He  has  drawn  aside  the  veil  which 
screened  from  human  sight  the  world  into  which 
we  pass  at  death.  And  it  is  not  the  "inter- 
mediate state  "  only  that  He  has  unveiled.  For 
after  declaring  that  now,  and  in  this  present 
68 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

world,  there  is  life  for  all  who  hear  His  voice, 
He  adds,  "Marvel  not  at  this  :  for  the  hour  is 
coming  in  the  which  all  that  are  in  the  graves 
shall  hear  His  voice,  and  shall  come  forth,  they 
that  have  done  good,  unto  the  resurrection  of 
life;  and  they  that  have  done  evil,  unto  the 
resurrection  of  judgment." 

Now  here  we  are  not  dealing  with  theological 
doctrines  of  a  kind  that  are  a  matter  of  contro- 
versy, but  with  basic  truths  plainly  revealed  by 
the  Lord  Himself.  And  this  being  so,  any  one 
who  rejects  them  declares  himself  an  infidel. 

Such  then  is  the  answer  which  Christianity 
gives  to  the  question  here  at  issue.  Death  is 
not  the  end  of  human  existence,  but  a  crisis 
after  which  existence  continues  in  a  new  phase. 
And  that  phase,,  moreover,  is  only  temporary. 

Scripture  tells  us  something  about  the  bodies 
in  which  the  just  will  pass  to  glory;  but  as  to 
the  others  it  is  strangely  silent.  As  I  have  seen 
prisoners  on  their  discharge  from  jail  resuming 
the  wretched  garments  they  wore  upon  arrest,  I 
have  sometimes  wondered  whether  the  unjust 
will  be  reclothed  in  bodies  akin  to  those  in  which 
they  sinned.  My  purpose  here,  however,  is  not 
to  indulge  in  idle  speculations  of  any  kind,  but 
rather  to  indicate  what  Christianity  plainly 
reveals  upon  the  subject  of  this  symposium. 


NO  ONE  GOMES  BACK  TO  TELL 

By  JOHN  BLOUNDELLE-BURTON 

THE  answer  to  the  question  is  impossible.  To 
state,  however,  what  we  hope,  perhaps  more 
than  what  we  believe,  is  far  easier,  presuming 
that  we  are  fully  prepared  to  base  our  belief  on 
the  statements  of  the  Bible,  of  which  no  one 
would  desire  to  speak  with  doubt.  We  may  say, 
in  a  word,  that  our  universal  belief — the  belief 
we  wish  to  hold — is  the  old  assertion  that  those 
who  have  done  well  shall  have  "everlasting  life," 
and  that  those  who  have  done  evil  shall  go  into 
" everlasting  fire."  The  last  two  words,  how- 
ever, are  calculated  to  shake  the  belief  of  those 
who  are  most  desirous  to  believe. 

Let  us  regard  this  point,  since  it  creates  ex- 
treme difficulties.  Whence  came  the  belief  that 
fire  will  be  the  punishment  of  those  who,  being 
dead,  can  feel  nothing,  or,  being  dead  for 
myriads  of  years,  can  have  left  behind  no  grain 
capable  of  destruction  ?  Consider  the  style  of 
writing  of  those  who  may  have  promulgated  such 
doctrines,  and  also  whence  they  deduced  them. 
Recent  years,  nay,  recent  days,  have  proved  to 
us  by  discoveries  made  that  human  beings  lived 

73 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

at  the  time  the  world  was  undergoing  strange 
changes;  there  was  the  glacial  period,  the  fire 
period,  and  others. 

Those  human  beings  may  have  heard  of  both 
through  early  legends.  Fire  may  have  appeared 
to  them  the  most  awful  of  the  two  calamities; 
so  would  not  fire  have  seemed  to  their  crude,  un- 
instructed,  almost  animal  minds  the  most  ap- 
palling horror  that  could  fall  on  them  ?  Might 
not  hell,  as  we  speak  of  it,  viz.,  "everlasting 
fire,"  have  struck  them  as  the  most  terrible 
punishment  that  could  befall  the  guilty?  On 
the  other  hand,  "everlasting  life,"  to  the  Eastern 
mind,  would  depict — it  does  so  to  this  day — 
calm  and  placid  joys.  It  does  so  to  the  most 
devout  of  us,  and  depicts  happiness  such  as  we 
ourselves  imagine  Heaven  to  be,  viz.,  the  ever- 
lasting life  in  which  we  shall  all  share  if  we 
are  of  those  who  have  done  well. 

Yet  on  this  point,  on  which  the  most  saintly 
as  well  as  the  most  evil  are  still  embarrassed, 
no  information  is  forthcoming.  No  visitation  of 
those  we  have  loved  dearly,  of  those  who  have 
been  our  friends,  is  ever  vouchsafed;  yet  all  of 
us  aspire  to  learn  something,  to  receive  one 
word,  one  token  that  shall  make  things  clear  to 
us.  We  want  absolute  proof,  tangible  signs  of 
what  will  happen  when  we  have  left  this  world, 
but  no  one  comes  back  to  tell  us.  We  try  to 
believe — the  veriest  atheist  would  believe  and 
F  71 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

respect  if  all  could  be  made  clear,  made  sure. 
There  would  be  no  sinners  on  this  earth  if  they 
who  are  inclined  to  sin  knew  what  their  deserts 
would  be;  if  they  who  now  lead  good  and  pure 
lives  could  know  that  their  reward  was  certain. 

The  latter  merit  that  knowledge  because  even 
the  good  would  desire  to  be  sure;  the  former 
would  at  once  reform  and  indulge  no  more  in 
scoffing  and  deriding  a  future  life  as  that  of  a 
monk's  or  an  old  wife's  tale.  But  no  one  comes 
back  to  tell  us,  and  so,  be  we  either  good  or 
bad,  there  lingers  ever  with  us  all  the  dread 
reflection  that  we  have  no  actual  knowledge  of 
what  happens  to  us  when  we  die. 


THE  BIBLICAL  VIEW 

By  Rev.  DINSDALE  T.  YOUNG    (President  of  the 
Wesleyan  Conference) 

IT  is  the  pre-supposition  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion that  we  shall  live  again,  and  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  whole  appeal  of  Christianity  must 
lose  its  reality  unless  founded  upon  the  doctrine 
of  a  second  life. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  Lord  Tennyson  that 
he  was  discussing  with  Bishop  Lightfoot  one 
day  the  question  of  Christianity,  and  that  they 
both  emphatically  declared  that  immortality  was 
the  fundamental  matter  in  Christianity. 

I  believe  that  this  is  a  conclusion  from  which 
there  can  be  no  reasonable  appeal.  The  Bible, 
which  we  accept  as  our  great  spiritual  authority, 
is  pervaded  with  the  doctrine  of  immortality. 
The  Old  Testament  has  many  hints  of  it  for 
students,  though  some  doubting  readers  of  to- 
day do  not  choose  to  admit  their  presence.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  however,  I  believe  you  will 
find  that  the  doctrine  of  a  future  life  is  presented 
in  the  very  first  book  of  the  Bible,  and  certainly 
in  the  case  of  some  of  the  Old  Testament  writers 

73 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

it  was  a  conviction  that  had  almost  the  sureness 
which  might  mark  the  Christian  believer. 

Then,  when  we  come  to  the  New  Testament, 
in  the  remarkable  words  of  St.  Paul  it  is  brought 
to  light  in  the  Gospel. 

Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  distinctly  taught  the 
doctrine  that  we  shall  live  again;  so  did  all  the 
Apostles.  Passage  after  passage  might  be  cited 
from  the  New  Testament  books  which  clearly  in- 
dicate this. 

Then,  again,  the  resurrection  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  is  to  me  the  chief  evidence  of  the 
life  to  come ;  and  the  Resurrection  is  an  his- 
torical fact  which  is  better  attested  than  almost 
any  other  fact  of  history.  Such  is  the  verdict  of 
scholars  and  historical  students  who  have  very 
carefully  weighed  all  the  evidence.  Never  be- 
fore was  there  such  good  reason  for  accepting 
the  resurrection  of  Christ  as  an  historical  fact 
as  there  is  to-day. 

Now,  granted  that  Christ  rose  again  from 
the  dead,  you  have  an  indisputable  demonstra- 
tion of  the  fact  that  we  shall  live  again.  You 
sometimes  hear  people  say  that  no  one  has  ever 
come  back  from  the  world  beyond  to  bear  witness* 
to  its  existence,  but  that  suggestion  is  abso- 
lutely refuted  by  the  resurrection  of  our  Lord. 
No  one  can  honestly  or  with  any  show  of  reason 
or  accuracy  declare  that  no  one  ever  came  back, 
for  He  came  back.  I  put  the  resurrection  of 

74 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

Jesus  Christ  as  the  foundation  evidence  of  the 
fact  that  we  shall  live  again. 

Then  Nature  appears  to  me  to  confirm  that 
suggestion  of  a  future  life.  Bishop  Butler,  in 
his  great  "Analogy,"  a  work  the  main  points 
of  which  never  can  be  overthrown,  has  argued 
very  powerfully  that  Nature  abounds  in  hints 
and  suggestions  of  the  future  life. 

We  see  in  human  nature,  in  the  nature  of 
animals  and  in  the  vegetable  world,  startling 
illustrations  which  no  thoughtful  person  can 
reject — wonderful  hints  of  life  under  new  con- 
ditions in  another  state. 

Then  another  great  evidence,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  that  we  shall  live  again  consists  in  our 
conscience.  Now  perhaps,  next  to  the  resurrec- 
tion of  our  Lord,  the  ministry  of  conscience  in 
every  human  being  is  the  strongest  indication 
of  a  life  to  come.  Conscience  distinctly  preaches, 
to  those  who  will  listen,  that  there  is  another 
world.  Conscience  is  constantly  appealing  to 
us  on  this  point.  People  often  stifle  their  con- 
science, and,  as  St.  Paul  put  it,  they  "sear" 
their  conscience  so  that  it  loses  its  power;  but 
if  it  is  not  stifled  or  seared  it  bears  an  irresistible 
message  of  a  future  life.  If  people  will  only 
listen  to  their  conscience  as  it  speaks  within 
them,  it  seems  to  me  that  they  must  be  abso- 
lutely driven  to  believe  that  we  shall  all  live 
again. 

75 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

The  wonderful  faculty  which  dwells  in  every 
human  being  is  in  truth  a  great  prophet  of  the 
life  beyond. 

Another  very  striking  suggestion  that  we 
shall  live  again  is  to  be  found  in  the  all  but 
universality  of  that  conviction.  Among  all 
nations  and  in  all  times  there  has  been  a  belief 
in  immortality.  Among  heathen  peoples  the 
belief  often  assumes  very  grotesque  forms,  but 
it  none  the  less  exists  !  How  can  we  account 
for  the  universal  prevalence  of  the  idea  and  its 
continual  prevalence  except  by  the  supposition 
that  it  is  an  instinct  implanted  by  our  Maker  in 
the  human  breast? 

Another  important  consideration  which  has  a 
very  strong  influence  upon  my  own  mind  is  the 
fact  that  a  belief  in  immortality  has  always  had 
such  an  ennobling  influence  wherever  it  has 
been  accepted.  No  one  ever  taught  more  beauti- 
fully or  more  impressively  than  Tennyson  did 
how  the  doctrine  of  immortality  points  to  all 
that  is  moral  and  noble  in  human  character. 

Tennyson  speaks  in  one  of  his  poems  of  the 
great  moral  qualities,  and  he  says  something  like 
this:  "Take  the  charm  'for  ever'  from  them, 
and  they  crumble  into  dust."  I  believe  Tenny- 
son's doctrine  to  be  entirely  true  !  Wherever 
the  doctrine  of  a  future  life  is  received  it  is  a 
check  upon  sin ;  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
doctrine  of  immortality  has  been  one  of  the 

76 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

most  powerful  influences  in  leading  men  to 
accept  the  Saviour  and  to  lead  good  lives. 

On  the  other  hand,  wherever  the  doctrine 
is  disbelieved  you  lose  one  of  the  greatest  forces 
for  all  that  is  moral  and  spiritually  good. 

Finally,  another  consideration  which  seri- 
ously impresses  me  is  this — that  the  very  noblest 
intelligences  and  spirits  in  history  have  held  the 
doctrine,  and  that  a  great  deal  of  their  nobleness 
is  to  be  attributed  to  their  having  held  it. 

Not  to  go  back  to  the  earlier  ages,  think  of 
the  influence  the  belief  in  a  future  life  has  had 
on  some  of  the  master  minds  of  modern  times. 
Think  of  the  fact  that  it  was  an  intense  reality 
to  such  men  as  Mr.  Gladstone,  Lord  Salisbury, 
Bishop  Westcott,  Robert  Browning,  Alfred 
Tennyson. 

These  men  were  enthusiasts  for  that  doctrine, 
and  if  we  look  into  the  history  of  humanity  we 
shall  find,  I  think  without  exception,  that  all 
the  very  noblest  personalities  have  retained  this 
doctrine  most  definitely.  The  argument  in 
favour  of  a  belief  in  immortality  based  on  the 
qualities  of  those  who  have  held  such  a  belief 
seems  to  me  to  be  an  argument  which  is  un- 
assailable, or,  if  not  unassailable,  at  all  events 
invincible. 


77 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY-IS 
IT  REASONABLE? 

By  J.   ARTHUR  HILL 

IN  these  days  of  widespread  bereavement,  and 
when  the  thoughts  of  even  those  who  have  lost 
no  dear  ones  are  turned  to  the  graver  things  of 
life,  it  is  natural  that  the  question  of  Immortality 
should  come  very  much  to  the  front  in  many 
minds.  The  world-old  query,  more  or  less  ob- 
scured in  ordinary  days,  insistently  presents 
itself  :  "  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live  again  ?  " 
Religion  has  always  said  "Yes";  Science — or 
some  of  its  votaries,  in  the  name  of  science — 
has  sometimes  said  "  No  " ;  and  the  general  mind 
has  naturally  been  perplexed. 

What  is  the  state  of  affairs  now — is  there  any 
nearer  approach  to  agreement?  Can  we  reach 
any  firmer  ground  in  this  momentous  matter? 
I  say  that  undoubtedly  we  can ;  for  a  summing- 
up  of  Science  and  Philosophy  at  the  present  day 
is  vastly  more  favourable  to  the  religious  view 
than  ever  before.  Indeed,  Science  is  now  de- 
finitely on  the  side  of  Religion,  and  the  average 
mind  is  no  longer  pulled  two  ways.  We  can  be 
religious  without  being  unscientific;  we  can  be 

78 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

scientific  without  being  irreligious.  And  this  is 
as  it  ought  to  be. 

As  a  result,  very  largely,  of  investigations 
and  general  advance  in  certain  branches  of 
psychology  during  the  last  thirty  years,  the  best 
scientific  minds  now  take  an  entirely  different 
view  of  the  soul  from  that  of  the  earlier  scientists 
such  as  Biichner  and  Hackel. 

The  body  is  no  longer  looked  on  as  producing 
the  mind  as  the  liver  produces  bile — in  the 
materialist's  famous  and  foolish  phrase — but  as 
transmitting  it.  The  mind  works  through  the 
body,  but  is  in  no  way  dependent  on  it  for  exist- 
ence. The  body  is  merely  the  vehicle  or  organ 
for  the  mind's  manifestation  in  the  present 
world.  Naturally,  if  the  material  instrument 
gets  damaged — as  in  apoplexy  by  a  blood-clot 
on  the  brain — the  mind's  manifestation  is  inter- 
fered with  :  the  mechanism  is  out  of  order,  the 
current  does  not  flow.  But  it  is  only  a  block, 
not  an  extinction — the  mind  is  there  all  the  same, 
as  it  is — equally  really — in  sleep,  which  is  a 
similar,  though  in  this  case  quite  healthy,  ces- 
sation of  manifestation.  And  if  the  organ  is 
smashed  completely,  as  at  death  or  soon  after- 
wards, it  makes  no  difference  to  the  spirit.  The 
latter  simply  withdraws  when  the  body  ceases 
to  be  usable  for  manifestation.  It  "goes  up 
higher  " ;  quits  the  material  world,  where  it  had 
lessons  to  learn  but  which  has  now  served  its 

79 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

purpose ;  and  turns  to  other  and  higher  activities 
of  a  wider  range,  in  the  spiritual  world — though 
not  forgetting  loved  ones  left  behind,  for  there 
is  good  reason  to  believe,  on  purely  scientific 
grounds,  that  the  "dead  "  can  still  interest  them- 
selves in  our  affairs,  that  they  often  are  still  with 
us  and  aware  of  our  thoughts  and  needs,  and 
that  they  exert  themselves  to  comfort  and  to  help 
the  sorrowing  and  burdened  soul. 

This  "transmissive,"  view  of  the  soul's 
relation  to  the  body  was  held  by  the  greatest 
psychologist  of  modern  times — Professor  William 
James,  M.D.,  of  Harvard — who  expounded  it 
only  a  few  years  ago,  and  not  long  before  his 
lamented  death,  in  his  brilliant  little  book 
"Human  Immortality,"  in  the  Ingersoll  Lecture 
series.  And  it  is  held,  on  strictly  scientific 
grounds,  mark  you — and  as  a  result  of  his  own 
investigations — by  the  most  famous  scientific 
man  in  England,  who  is  at  the  same  time  prob- 
ably the  best-known  scientist  in  the  whole  world 
to-day,  namely,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge.  Other  great 
names  might  easily  be  added :  Sir  William 
Crookes,  President  of  the  Royal  Society;  Sir 
William  Barrett,  the  foremost  scientist  in  Ire- 
land; Professor  Bergson,  the  greatest  living 
philosopher,  whether  of  France  or  the  world; 
Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour,  Mr.  G.  W.  Balfour,  Dr. 
F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  leader  of  the  Pragmatists  in 
England — all  these  are  names  taken  at  random 
80 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

from  the  large  array  of  the  foremost  thinkers  of 
our  time  who  accept  a  doctrine  of  the  soul  which 
permits  or  definitely  involves  its  independence 
of  the  body  and  its  consequent  survival  of  that 
body's  death. 

A  further  question  here  arises,  as  to 
whether  "survival"  is  the  same  as  "im- 
mortality." Strictly,  it  is  not.  The  latter 
is  usually  understood  to  mean  endless  life 
as  individuals,  while  survival  of  bodily  death 
does  not  necessarily  involve  endlessness.  It 
may  be  that  after  much  growth  and  advance 
as  individuals  in  the  heavenly  world,  we  sooner 
or  later  drop  the  limits  and  fetters  of  personality, 
achieving  a  more  intimate  union  with  the  Divine, 
such  as  some  mystics  have  attained  even  while 
on  earth.  This,  or  something  like  this,  seems 
a  reasonable  supposition,  for  it  is  a  common- 
place of  our  experience  that  perfect  happiness 
is  most  nearly  attained  by  sacrifice  of  the  self, 
by  giving  up  our  own  wants  and  surrendering 
ourselves  to  God.  "In  His  will  is  our  peace," 
as  Dante  has  it;  and  perhaps,  when  the  spirit 
is  purged  and  sufficiently  worthy,  it  may  really 
and  truly  enter  into  the  joy  of  its  Lord  and  be 
with  Him  in  closest  union.  But  it  is  likely  that 
many  stages  of  progress,  as  individuals,  will 
precede  that  beatific  culmination. 

Another  cheering  thing  about  modern  psy- 
chology is  its  new  view  of  the  structure,  so  to 

81 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

speak,  of  human  personality.  We  all  are  dis- 
gusted with  ourselves  at  times,  in  our  failure  to 
live  anywhere  near  up  to  the  level  of  our  own 
conceptions  and  ideals;  and  when  we  think  of 
the  survival,  or  immortality,  or  even  the  lengthy 
duration  of  our  present  self  after  death,  we  feel 
a  certain  shrinking.  Shall  we  not  get  very  sick 
of  ourselves — shall  we  not  weary  of  the  eternal 
struggle  against  our  baser  part?  As  the  boy 
said,  quoted  by  Emerson  :  "  It  makes  me  so  tired 
when  I  think  of  '  for  ever.' ' 

But  psychology  here  steps  in  to  the  rescue. 
It  has  established  that  our  present  self  is  only 
a  fraction  of  our  total  self.  As  Wordsworth 
says:  "We  are  greater  than  we  know."  We 
are  like  icebergs — in  Sir  Oliver  Lodge's  simile 
— which  float  with  only  one-twelfth  of  their  bulk 
above  water,  this  twelfth,  more  or  less,  repre- 
senting our  present  consciousness. 

So  we  need  not  indulge  exaggerated  fears 
about  the  tedium  or  stress  of  our  own  society  in 
the  heavenly  world,  for  we  shall  be  different 
from  and  larger  than  ourselves  as  known  to  us 
now.  Identity  will  continue,  as  identity  con- 
tinues between  the  ignorant  child  and  the  mature 
wise  man  he  develops  into;  but,  as  in  the 
parallel,  there  will  be  a  gain,  an  accretion,  a 
growth,  and  we  shall  be  changed.  We  do  not 
yet  know  what  we  shall  be — not  exactly  or  by 
experience,  which  is  yet  to  come  in  its  due  course 

82 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

• — but  we  know  enough  to  infer  that  our  tran- 
scendental self  is  really  a  much  greater  thing 
than  the  small  and  often  very  unsatisfactory  self 
which  is  now  being  manifested  here  through  the 
channel  of  the  body.  And  with  this  scientific- 
ally justified  inference  we  can  look  forward  with 
contentment  to  the  introduction  to  our  wider  self 
which  awaits  us  at  the  time  of  transition.  It  was 
probably  knowledge  of  this  greater  range  of  the 
real  total  personality  that  led  to  the  phrase 
(quoted  approvingly  by  Christ,  but  puzzling  to 
many)  "Ye  are  gods" — i.e.  you  are  greater  and 
more  divine  than  you  yourselves  know  (Psalm 
Ixxxii.  6;  St.  John's  Gospel  x.  34). 

It  is  sometimes  asked  :  "  Shall  we  know  our 
friends  when  our  turn  comes  to  join  them  on 
the  other  side — will  they  not  have  changed,  or 
shall  we  not  ourselves  have  changed  out  of 
recognition  in  the  interim,  particularly  if  it  has 
been  long  ?  " 

The  answer  is  that  we  shall  know  them,  and 
shall  be  known,  perfectly;  if  we  think  other- 
wise, or  have  doubts,  it  is  because  we  are  think- 
ing how  bodily  changes  make  us  unrecognisable 
sometimes,  in  our  earth  life,  to  friends  of  thirty 
or  forty  years  ago. 

But  in  the  heavenly  world  recognition  will 
not  depend  on  material  bodies ;  we  shall  put  on 
spiritual  bodies,  as  St.  Paul  says,  and  shall  per- 
ceive each  other's  minds  and  souls  much  more 
83 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

clearly  than  ever  before — in  other  words,  we 
shall  not  only  know  each  other  but  shall  know 
each  other  much  better  than  we  did  in  the  earth 
life  when  clogged  by  the  material  body  through 
which  we  saw  only  dimly. 

And,  as  to  changes,  minds  change  less  than 
bodies.  We  meet  old  friends,  school  chums  and 
what  not,  after  long  separation,  and  at  once  the 
old  intimacy  is  re-established. 

I  have  just  had  a  striking  illustration  of  this. 
My  dearest  chum  of  twenty  years  ago  has  just 
revisited  the  Old  Country  after  long  sojourn  in 
his  adopted  country — Canada,  Pacific  Coast. 
Little  correspondence  had  passed  between  us 
after  the  first  year  or  two,  and  I  almost  feared 
to  meet  him;  for  it  seemed  that  we  must  in- 
evitably have  diverged  as  to  our  individual 
interests  in  life,  our  respective  environments 
having  been  so  different;  and  this  feeling  of 
strangeness,  after  the  old  times  of  affection  and 
close  sympathy,  would  be  painful. 

But  when  the  meeting  came  all  was  well. 
My  friend  was  the  same  good  old  fellow,  the 
same  personality  that  I  had  known,  and  in  half 
an  hour  we  felt  as  close  as  of  old.  True,  each 
had  much  to  tell  the  other,  each  had  developed 
on  different  lines,  but  evidently  the  fact  of  our 
ancient  congeniality  had  ensured  that  any 
further  growth  of  the  one  would  be  of  a  kind 
which  would  interest  and  attract  the  other.  The 

84 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

personality  is  the  thing;  its  knowledge  or  ex- 
perience is  but  a  garment.  So  with  after-death 
recognitions.  We  need  not  fear  that  we  shall 
not  know  our  dear  ones,  or  that  they  will  have 
left  us  hopelessly  behind.  They  will  have  much 
to  tell  us,  and  there  will  be  much  comparing  of 
notes;  but  the  mutual  recognition  of  the  selves 
will  be  full  and  intimate  and  happy.  Indeed  it 
may  be — nay,  it  will  be — that  we  shall  be  in 
some  sort  necessary  to  their  joy;  "that  they 
without  us  should  not  be  made  perfect." 

Therefore  in  these  world-shaking  times  let 
us  hold  to  cheerfulness  and  faith.  God  is  over 
all ;  the  present  life  is  but  a  dream,  a  discipline, 
an  education.  It  is  better  on  before,  when  we 
shall  have  awakened  to  the  wider  horizons  that 
await  us — to  the  fuller  life  and  activities,  to  the 
companionship  of  those  we  have  loved  and  tem- 
porarily lost,  and  to  the  closer  union  with  God, 
who  is  Love  itself. 


THE  THEOSOPHIG  VIEW 

By   Mrs.   ANNIE  BESANT 

ANSWERS  to  this  question  have  been  sought  for 
by  man  along  various  roads,  and  the  answers 
may  be  classified  as  religious,  spiritualistic, 
theosophic,  and  materialistic. 

The  last  may  be  summed  up  in  the  statement 
that  nothing  happens  to  us,  because  we  cease  to 
exist  when  the  body  dies.  The  religious  answers 
are  various,  but  all  unite  in  the  belief  that  we 
continue  to  live  beyond  death. 

The  spiritualistic  answers  agree  as  to  the  re- 
vival of  the  individual  after  the  death  of  the 
body,  and  a  mass  of  evidence  is  proffered,  which, 
in  the  opinion  of  all  who  have  carefully  studied 
it,  places  the  fact  of  revival  beyond  dispute. 
When  every  possible  deduction  has  been  made 
for  fraud,  hallucination,  self-deception,  there 
remains  an  irreducible  minimum  of  evidence, 
which  is  sufficient  to  prove  that  the  man  survives 
on  the  other  side  of  death.  The  evidence,  as  is 
well  known,  is  obtained  through  the  class  of 
sensitives  known  as  "mediums/'  and  is  of  the 
most  varied  kinds — writing,  speaking,  materialis- 
ing, under  trance  conditions  or  otherwise. 

86 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

The  answers  given  by  theosophists  depend 
on  investigations  carried  on  by  means  of  the  exer- 
cise of  super-normal  senses,  sometimes  born 
with  the  person  using  them,  sometimes  de- 
veloped by  deliberate  effort. 

The  theory  as  to  these  senses  is  easily  stated. 
Man  is  a  spiritual  intelligence  clothed  in  matter. 
This  matter  exists  in  our  worlds  in  five  main 
states,  differing  from  each  other  by  the  funda- 
mental types  of  their  atoms,  the  aggregations 
of  which  form  the  materials  of  which  each  world 
is  composed. 

For  our  purpose  we  may  ignore  the  two 
higher  worlds,  and  consider  only  the  three  lower, 
in  which  the  normal  evolution  of  man  is  going 
on.  These  are  :  the  physical  world,  from  which 
are  drawn  the  materials  forming  our  physical 
bodies;  the  intermediate  world,  generally  called 
the  astral  world,  from  which  are  drawn  the 
materials  forming  the  astral  body,  the  seat  of 
sensations,  desires,  and  emotions;  the  heavenly, 
or  mental  world,  from  which  are  drawn  the 
materials  forming  the  mental  body,  the  seat  of 
thought. 

The  man  himself,  the  spiritual  intelligence, 
the  conscious  being,  uses  these  bodies  of  his 
for  thinking,  feeling,  and  action  in  relation  to 
the  worlds  in  which  he  lives  and  moves,  and 
in  his  normal  everyday  consciousness  he  is 
active  in  these  three  worlds,  working  from  the 
G  87 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

mental  world  through  the  cerebro-spinal  system 
in  the  physical  body,  and  from  the  astral  world 
through  the  sympathetic  system,  the  physical 
body  being  the  apparatus,  the  mechanism, 
through  which  the  forces  of  thought  or  of 
desire  are  able  to  manifest  themselves  in  the 
physical  world. 

As  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  has  pointed  out,  only 
a  part  of  man's  consciousness  works  in  the 
physical  body,  but  that  part  shows  the  three- 
fold characteristics  of  the  whole — thinking, 
desiring,  acting. 

The  greater  part  of  man's  consciousness, 
according  to  this  view,  is  outside  man's 
physical  body,  and  can  manifest  itself  through 
the  medium  of  the  astral  and  mental  bodies 
in  the  astral  and  mental  worlds.  In  "waking 
consciousness"  the  activity  is  shown  through 
the  physical  body;  but  man  is  not  "awake" 
all  the  time. 

Consciousness  is  active  when  the  body 
sleeps,  and  psychologists  recognise  and  have 
investigated  the  "dream-consciousness,"  and  by 
the  study  of  dreams,  of  trance-conditions,  hyp- 
notic and  mesmeric,  they  have  accumulated  a 
number  of  facts  which  show  that  when  the 
senses  are  deadened  and  the  brain  is  inactive, 
the  consciousness  manifests  certain  powers  more 
extensive  than  it  can  show  during  the  use  of  its 
ordinary  physical  apparatus.  These  powers  are 

88 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

manifested  by  the  consciousness  through  the 
lesser  dense  medium  of  astral  matter,  the  matter 
of  the  "intermediate  world,"  in  which  conscious- 
ness performs  functions  actively  when  the  body 
is  asleep. 

To  put  it  in  other  words,  the  consciousness 
which  works  in  the  waking  body  is  largely 
withdrawn  from  the  body  when  it  sleeps,  and 
consciousness  is  less  impeded  in  the  exercise 
of  its  powers  when  it  is  working  outside  the 
dense  and  comparatively  sluggish  matter  of  the 
physical  body. 

In  certain  conditions  of  very  deep  trance  the 
consciousness  is  almost  withdrawn  from  the 
astral  as  well  as  from  the  physical  body,  and 
then  it  works  in  still  rarer  regions,  and  we  have 
the  visions  of  saints,  of  great  seers  like  Sweden- 
borg,  etc. 

Now,  physical,  astral,  and  mental  bodies 
have  all  organs  of  perception,  by  which  con- 
sciousness perceives  the  corresponding  external 
worlds.  The  senses  of  sight,  hearing,  taste, 
smell,  touch  are  such,  bringing  the  external 
world  into  relation  with  human  consciousness. 

According  to  theosophical  teachings,  the 
astral  and  mental  bodies  have  also  their  organs 
of  perception,  bringing  the  worlds  from  which 
their  materials  are  drawn  into  relation  with 
human  consciousness.  Hence,  observation  of 
the  phenomena  of  the  astral  and  heavenly  worlds 

89 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

is  possible  for  all  those  who  have  in  the  course 
of  their  evolution,  whether  normally  or  by  any 
quickening  process,  brought  into  functional 
activity  these  perceptive  organs. 

It  is  on  observation  carried  on  by  means  of 
these  that  theosophists  depend  for  their  know- 
ledge of  after-death  states.  An  increasing 
number  of  students  are  able  to  carry  on  such 
observations,  and  the  records  of  these  are  accu- 
mulating. 

The  conditions  of  the  world  in  which  our 
consciousness  works  when  outside  the  physical 
body — whether  leaving  that  body  in  sleep  or 
dead — are  as  various  as  those  of  the  physical 
world,  and  the  observations  of  students  must 
vary  according  to  the  regions  they  investigate. 
But  certain  broad  facts  emerge. 

The  man  after  death,  in  his  desires  and 
emotions,  is  the  same  man  as  he  was  before 
death ;  hence,  if  his  desires  were  such  as  need 
a  physical  body  for  their  satisfaction,  he  suffers 
keenly  from  unsatisfied  cravings,  which  only 
gradually  disappear  by  a  process  of  slow  starva- 
tion ;  the  application  of  this  knowledge  to  con- 
duct leads  a  man  to  lessen  such  desires,  and  to 
seek  gratification  rather  in  the  class  of  desires 
which  pertain  to  emotions  than  in  those  which 
pertain  to  appetites.  ^Esthetic  emotions,  the 
pursuit  of  knowledge,  persist  for  the  functioning 
of  consciousness  in  the  astral  or  intermediate 

90 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

world,  and  help  can  be  sent  thence,  by  the  wire- 
less telegraphy  of  thought  and  emotion,  to  those 
who  are  still  labouring  in  the  physical  world. 

Many  an  experience  of  happiness  and  of 
suffering,  as  the  results  of  the  physical  earth- 
life,  are  engraven  by  the  consciousness  on  the 
tablets  of  the  spirit's  memory,  and  appear  as 
"conscience"  in  a  subsequent  life,  as  the  im- 
pulse to  do  the  right  or  to  abstain  from  the 
wrong. 

When  the  experiences  of  these  results  are 
all  assimilated  and  recorded  in  memory,  the 
man  passes  on  into  the  heavenly  world,  and 
there  transmutes  into  faculty  all  mental  and 
emotional  experiences  of  a  pure  and  useful 
nature.  The  work  of  the  consciousness  in  the 
heaven-world  is  this  assimilation  and  trans- 
mutation of  experiences,  and  when  all  these  are 
thus  changed  the  result  passes  on  into  the 
spiritual  consciousness  of  the  man  himself,  who 
retains  the  memory  of  all  the  experiences;  but 
when  he  puts  forth  a  part  of  his  consciousness 
again  to  gather  new  food  of  experience  in  the 
lower  worlds,  he  implants  in  the  new  materials 
he  gathers  round  him  only  the  results  of  past 
experiences  as  faculties,  not  the  facts  of  the 
experiences  as  memories.  The  memories  reside 
in  the  spiritual  consciousness,  not  in  the  part 
which  is  embodied  as  mind,  emotion,  and 
activity. 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

Our  work,  then,  on  the  other  side  of  death 
is  the  building  of  conscience  and  of  faculty  out 
of  the  experiences  gathered  during  physical  life. 
With  these  we  return  to  a  new  earth-life,  to 
make  further  progress.  Edward  Carpenter 
wrote  truly  :  "Every  pain  that  I  suffered  in  one 
body  was  a  power  which  I  wielded  in  the  next." 
By  this  process  is  evolution  carried  on,  and  we 
pass  out  of  weakness  into  strength,  out  of 
ignorance  into  knowledge. 

I  have  not  touched  here,  in  this  dry  record 
of  observed  facts,  on  the  joys  of  the  larger  life, 
the  loves  which  pass  unbroken  through  death, 
the  glad  companionships  which  irradiate  im- 
mortal life  with  beauty  and  with  happiness. 
Our  future  is  in  our  own  hands,  for  the  Spirit, 
who  is  Man,  is  the  Inner  Ruler  Immortal ;  we 
create  our  future  by  our  present,  for  we  live  in  a 
world  of  law,  and  for  him  who  lives  nobly  Death 
is  but  the  entrance  into  a  larger  consciousness,  a 
fuller  life. 


CAN  CONVERSE  BE  HELD  WITH 
THE  SPIRITS  OF  FRIENDS? 

By  GEORGE   E.  WINTER 

IF  Shakespeare  was  right  when  he  spoke  of  the 
next  world  as  "That  undiscovered  country  f rom 
whose  bourne  no  traveller  returns,"  then  it 
would  be  impossible  to  answer  the  momentous 
question,  "What  happens  to  us  when  we  die?" 
We  should  be  cut  off  from  both  sources  of 
knowledge.  We  should  neither  know  of  our 
own  experience  nor  from  the  experience  of 
others;  we  should  be  thrown  back  upon  mere 
theorising  and  speculation. 

Fortunately,  there  is  overwhelming  evidence 
that  Shakespeare  was  wrong  when  he  put  in  the 
mouth  of  Hamlet  the  dogmatic  assertion  that 
no  traveller  returns.  There  is  now  an  ever- 
increasing  body  of  expert  investigators  who 
point  to  a  quite  opposite  conclusion.  Not  only 
do  the  dead  return,  but  they  endeavour  to  give 
us  some  sort  of  notion  of  the  life  led  by  the  spirit 
when  it  has  thrown  off  the  encumbrance  of  the 
flesh. 

The  evidence  comes  in  the  most  convincing 
form  through  the  phenomena  of  what  is  called 

95 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

trance-mediumship.  As  the  name  suggests,  a 
"medium  "  is  one  whose  organism  may  be  used 
as  a  bridge  between  this  world  and  the  next. 
In  some  as  yet  unexplained  way  the  bodies  of 
those  possessing  this  extraordinary  faculty  may 
be  utilised  by  spirits  who  wish  to  communicate 
with  those  who  are  still  in  the  flesh.  The 
medium  loses  consciousness — passes  into  a 
trance — and  during  this  temporary  oblivion  the 
body,  with  its  nervous  organisation,  is  more  or 
less  successfully  controlled  by  the  spirit  operator. 

The  nature  of  the  evidence,  and  the  reasons 
for  believing  that  the  communications  received 
in  this  way  do  actually  come  from  the  spirits 
of  the  deceased  persons  who  claim  to  control 
the  medium,  cannot  be  detailed  here.  It  must 
suffice  to  say  that  those  who  have  had  the 
largest  experience  of  these  amazing  phenomena 
remained  convinced  that  they  have  held  con- 
verse with  the  spirits  of  friends  and  relatives 
long  since  consigned  to  the  grave. 

Now  if  you  were  quite  certain  that  you  were 
talking  to  the  spirit  of  one  whom  you  knew  and 
loved  on  the  earth,  what  would  be  the  first 
questions  that  would  rise  to  your  lips? 

Naturally  you  would  ask  :  Are  you  happy  ? 
Do  you  suffer  pain,  or  are  you  free  from  the 
innumerable  ills  that  human  flesh  is  heir  to? 
Do  you  remember  your  old  earth  life?  Have 
you  a  body,  and  do  the  old  loves  and  desires 

96 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

of  the  flesh  still  possess  you  ?  What  do  you  do 
in  your  new  life  ?  What  sort  of  a  world  are  you 
in  ?  How  do  you  pass  your  time  ? 

These  are  some  of  the  inevitable  questions 
that  would  rush  into  your  mind  once  you  had 
realised  that  you  were  enjoying  the  awful 
privilege  of  converse  with  one  who  was  dead. 
The  silence  of  the  grave  once  broken  you  would 
be  rilled  with  an  invincible  desire  to  know  the 
nature  of  the  fate  that  awaits  all  mankind. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  such  ques- 
tions have  been  asked  again  and  again,  and  if 
the  answers  are  not  always  in  that  definite  form 
which  the  questioner  so  eagerly  desires,  explana- 
tions are  not  far  to  seek. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  naturally  impossible 
to  obtain  any  proper  conception  of  a  super- 
sensible world  in  terms  of  the  sensible.  When 
spirits  undertake  to  explain  to  us  the  nature  of 
the  next  life,  and  what  goes  on  there,  they  have 
no  language  with  which  to  express  their 
thoughts,  and  we  can  never  get  a  clear  idea  of 
what  their  world  may  be  like.  It  is  as  though 
an  explorer  were  attempting  to  describe  a  new 
country  in  which  everything  is  so  different  from 
the  old  world  that  no  comparisons  are  possible. 

If  we  try  to  picture  to  ourselves  the  existence 
that  awaits  each  one  of  us  on  the  death  of  the 
body,  we  are  chilled  by  the  thought  that  life  in 
that  other  world  must  be  shadowy  and  unsub- 

97 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

stantial.  We  imagine  ourselves  as  formless 
ghosts  leading  a  dreary,  dream-like  existence, 
cut  off  from  the  sunshine  and  reality  of  the 
tangible  earth. 

Nothing  could  be  farther  from  the  truth. 
"The  spirit  body  is  as  actual , and  real  to  the 
spirit,"  says  one  communicator,  "as  the  old 
earth  body  appeared  to  me,  and  its  environments 
are  as  palpable  to  its  perceptions — it  has  simply 
passed  from  one  plane  of  conscious  existence  to 
another."  The  invisible  has  become  visible,  and 
the  formerly  visible  things  invisible. 

Most  people,  it  is  affirmed,  find  the  transition 
and  the  awakening  on  the  other  side  more 
natural  than  they  had  expected,  and  they  soon 
become  aware  that  they  are  in  a  real  world 
among  real  people,  and  are  as  much  alive  as 
ever  they  were  on  earth.  As  one  spirit  ex- 
pressed it :  it  was  like  waking  in  a  strange  bed- 
room when  on  a  holiday. 

It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  there  is  no 
drastic  change  in  the  personality  brought  about 
by  the  shedding  of  the  physical  body.  The  old 
personality  survives  with  all  its  characteristic 
memories,  its  individual  peculiarities,  its  loves 
and  hates — even  its  prejudices.  There  is  no 
sudden  illumination,  no  instantaneous  conver- 
sion of  erring,  sinful  men  and  women  into 
angels  of  light.  The  spirit  commences  its  new 
life  in  another  world  just  as  it  left  off  here — no 

98 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

better  and  no  wiser.  We  pick  up  the  thread 
where  it  dropped  from  our  nerveless  hand  when 
we  were  surprised  by  the  King  of  Terrors. 

But  the  loss  of  the  body  !  Surely  that  makes 
a  profound  difference? 

One  can  well  imagine  that  it  is  no  great 
hardship  to  many  who  have  found  their  fleshly 
tenement  a  prison-house  of  pain  and  suffering. 
To  those  who  dragged  through  life  the  heavy 
load  of  a  diseased  or  defective  organism,  the 
shedding  of  their  burden  of  flesh  can  only  be 
a  subject  for  thankfulness  and  rejoicing.  To 
all  it  will  be  a  gain.  For  if  we  are  to  believe  the 
assurances  of  those  who  have  passed  through 
the  great  experience,  we  shall  find  the  ethereal 
body  an  infinitely  free  and  more  perfect  medium 
of  expression  than  the  body  of  flesh. 

The  question  is  often  asked  :  Do  the  spirits 
of  the  dead  know  what  is  taking  place  on  the 
earth  ?  Can  the  father,  for  example,  who  has 
left  wife  and  children  unprovided  for,  view  from 
another  sphere  the  hopeless  struggles  and  suffer- 
ings of  those  he  has  left  behind  ? 

If  this  be  so,  then  whatever  advantages  an 
ethereal  body  may  confer,  whatever  compen- 
sations may  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  spirit,  the 
condition  of  a  vast  number  of  sensitive  souls 
must  be  one  of  poignant  anguish  at  seeing  the 
sorrow  of  those  they  love  and  in  being  able  to 
do  nothing  to  assuage  it. 

99 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

We  are  assured,  however,  that  spirits  are  no 
more  conscious  of  our  presence  than  we  are  of 
theirs.  The  loss  of  the  five  senses  closes  every 
avenue  leading  to  the  material  world.  Only  on 
rare  occasions  can  the  veil  separating  the  two 
states  of  existence  be  torn  aside  by  those 
possessing  the  mediumistic  faculty. 

It  is  true  that  memory  still  continues.  May 
not  the  uncertainty  of  the  fate  of  those  left 
behind  become  a  source  of  torture  to  spirits 
separated  from  their  loved  ones  by  an  impassable 
barrier  ? 

Well,  it  is  never  contended  that  the  condi- 
tions in  spirit  life  are  those  of  undiluted  bliss. 
The  spirit  must  progress,  and  progress  is  not 
accomplished  without  effort  and  suffering. 
Those  who  have  left  many  duties  undone,  those 
who  have  led  lives  of  selfish  indulgence,  without 
a  thought  for  the  sufferings  around  them,  will 
doubtless  have  to  endure  the  sting  of  remorse 
for  opportunities  neglected. 

Would  we  have  it  otherwise  ? 

But  sooner  or  later  all  will  awake  to  the  great 
spiritual  realities  which  bring  happiness  and 
peace.  The  consciousness  of  imperfection  and 
unhappiness  leads  to  repentance  and  aspiration, 
and  the  upward  path  opens  before  the  spirit 
which  truly  desires  to  walk  the  better  way. 

Surely  this  is  a  higher  and  more  inspiring 
gospel  than  the  old  theological  dogma  of  an 
100 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

everlasting  hell  of  flames  and  torment  to  which 
the  majority  of  mankind  will  be  assigned.  It 
is  a  doctrine  in  accordance  with  the  highest 
philosophical  and  religious  truth,  and  is  pre- 
cisely the  kind  of  revelation  we  should  expect 
from  a  traveller  returned  from  that  "dim 
bourne  "  towards  which  we  all  have  our  faces 
set. 


TOI 


WE  CANNOT  GOME  TO  AN  END 

By  A.  C.  BENSON,  C.V.O.,  M.A. 

THE  question  of  our  immortality  is  far  too 
wide  and  intricate  for  me  to  enter  upon  an  argu- 
ment or  discussion  about  it  here.  The  proof  is 
cumulative,  and  contains  a  large  subjective 
element.  I  can  here  only  summarise  my  own 
belief,  drawn  from  experience  as  interpreted  by 
reason. 

My  own  belief  is  that  life  is  a  force,  coming 
out  of  the  Mind  and  Essence  of  God,  for  ever 
trying,  for  reasons  unknown  to  us,  to  express 
itself  in  matter. 

I  believe  it  to  be  as  indestructible  as  matter ; 
at  least,  I  can  conceive  of  no  process  by  which 
life  or  matter  can  either  be  originated  or  brought 
to  an  end. 

I  therefore  believe  in  a  subsequent  life,  just 
as  I  believe  in  a  previous  life — but  under  what 
conditions  I  cannot  say.  But  I  do  not  believe 
that  personality  depends  on  memory — it  is  rather 
a  matter  of  quality  and  temperament;  and  thus 
the  fact  that  our  memory  does  not  seem  to 
extend  beyond  one  life  is  no  disproof  of  pre- 
existence. 

1 02 


IS  THERE  AN   INTERMEDIATE 
STATE  ? 

By  the  Rev.    BENJAMIN   BELL,  B.D.,  Moderator  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  of  England 

THE  subject  is  certainly  one  of  solemn  and  per- 
ennial interest,  and  it  cannot  be  long  absent  from 
the  minds  of  most  readers  in  these  days  of 
national  anxiety  and  war,  when  death  may  be 
very  near  to  our  dear  ones  or  ourselves. 

I  write  from  the  standpoint  of  a  Christian 
who  believes  in  the  supreme  authority  of  Our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  on  all  such  questions,  and 
recognises  the  testimony  of  the  New  Testament 
as  our  only  sure  guide  to  truth  through  His 
Holy  Spirit. 

Those  seventeenth  century  divines  who 
framed  the  standards  of  the  Presbyterian 
Churches  of  Great  Britain  and  America,  like 
most  of  the  Reformers  who  preceded  them,  were 
led  to  reject  entirely  the  idea  of  an  intermediate 
state  of  either  weal  or  woe  into  which  souls  pass 
at  death.  This  was  natural  enough  as  a  protest 
against  the  fantastic  system  of  purgatory,  but  it 
led  them  further,  in  my  opinion,  than  New 
Testament  Scripture  sanctions.  When  Our 
H  103 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

Lord  assured  the  penitent  thief  on  the  cross : 
"This  day  shalt  thou  be  with  Me  in  Paradise/' 
He  chose  a  word  familiar  to  the  Hebrew  teach- 
ing of  His  day,  but  which  we  have  no  right  con- 
fidently to  identify  with  Heaven,  His  Father's 
House,  especially  as  St.  Paul  uses  the  same 
word  in  his  account  of  the  man  in  Christ  (almost 
certainly  himself),  "who  was  caught  up  into 
Paradise  and  heard  unspeakable  words." 

Further,  as  all  readers  of  the  Revised  Version 
know,  the  Greek  word  Hades,  like  the  corre- 
sponding Hebrew  term  Sheol,  is  used  in  the 
New  Testament  as  the  place  of  departed  souls 
generally,  whether  they  are  in  peace  or  woe. 
For  myself  I  believe  that  Our  Lord  went  into 
Hades  between  His  death  and  resurrection,  and 
perhaps  preached  His  Gospel  there  as  the 
passage  in  I.  Peter  seems  to  tell  us,  "to  the 
spirits  in  keeping,  who  once  were  disobedient." 

Our  Lord  and  His  Apostles  represent  the 
death  of  Christians  as  a  "falling  asleep."  But 
that  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  belief  that  they 
awake  again  immediately  into  a  happy  conscious 
life.  Indeed,  some  of  us  have  had  the  joy  of 
seeing  the  face  of  our  friends  light  up  with  a 
glad  surprise  just  before  death,  and  have  heard 
them  addressing  by  name  dear  ones  who  have 
already  passed  behind  the  veil  as  if  they  saw 
them. 

In  Our  Lord's  parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus, 
104 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

"  Abraham's  bosom "  represents,  I  think,  the 
blessed  side  of  the  intermediate  state,  and  the 
"  Hades  "  where  the  rich  man  lay,  the  abode  of 
the  selfish,  God-forgetting  man.  It  is  not 
possible,  according  to  the  parable,  for  any  to 
pass  from  the  one  side  to  the  other,  but  that 
does  not  prove  that  when  the  day  of  final  judg- 
ment comes,  there  may  not  be  hope  for  such  as 
Dives.  Yet  we  must  recognise  that  Our  Lord 
was  wont  to  speak  with  sad  severity  of  the  future 
of  those  who  refuse  to  believe  and  follow  Him 
here  and  now. 

In  that  intermediate  state  it  seems  probable 
that  there  will  be  some  form  of  embodiment, 
sufficient  to  allow  of  intercourse,  and  thus  to 
facilitate  growth  in  holiness. 

One  is  often  called  to  speak  to  and  pray  with 
dying  persons  who  have  neglected  the  call  of 
Christ  throughout  life,  and  earnestly  ask  for 
guidance  at  its  close.  Occasionally  one  has 
seen  what  appeared  to  be  true  penitence  and 
eager  faith  in  such  persons.  Is  it  not  more 
likely,  and  more  according  to  God's  methods  of 
dealing  with  us  in  this  life,  that  such  new-born 
souls  should  pass  at  death  into  a  place  of  training 
for  Heaven,  than  into  Heaven  itself? 

Again,  I  have  known  many  Christian  men 
and  women  taken  away  suddenly  from  this 
world  in  their  early  prime,  when  they  had  just 
entered  or  were  in  the  very  midst  of  highly 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

useful  service  of  their  fellows — men  and  women 
singularly  fitted  to  commend  religion  to  others 
by  their  example  and  their  words. 

Does  it  not  help  us  to  say  "  Amen  "  to  such 
mysterious  withdrawals  of  the  very  choicest  in- 
struments of  Christian  blessing,  to  think  that 
they  may  be  needed  even  more  elsewhere,  in 
co-operating  with  their  Divine  Lord  in  the  up- 
holding in  faith  and  holiness  of  those  who 
passed  out  of  this  world  in  the  early  stages  of 
the  new  life  ? 


106 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF  SELF 

By  FLORA  ANNIE   STEEL,  the  Well-known  Novelist 

"  WHAT  value,  what  interest,  can  an  immortality 
have  for  me,"  asks  Dr.  Max  Nordau,  "in  which 
I  should  no  longer  love  what  I  have  loved,  no 
longer  hate  what  I  have  hated,  no  longer  re- 
member my  past  life,  with  all  its  small  and  great 
adventures,  joys,  sorrows,  ambitions,  etc.  etc.  ?  " 

What  value  indeed  ?  None  to  one  so  strictly 
limited  by  human  personality  as  Dr.  Nordau 
seems  to  be.  But  there  are  other  thinkers  who, 
thank  Heaven,  have  learnt  a  deeper  wisdom ; 
others  who  have  spoken  of  the  "self  within  the 
heart,  greater  than  the  earth,  greater  than 
Heaven.  A  self  that  encircles  all,  bright,  incor- 
poreal, scathless,  pure,  untouched  by  evil." 
And,  of  a  truth,  he  who  beholds  all  things  in 
this  self,  and  this  self  in  all  things,  never  turns 
away  from  it.  Sorrow,  joy,  even  death  are  left 
far  behind. 

Mystical  as  this  may  sound,  to  me,  at  any 
rate,  it  is  more  satisfactory  than  Dr.  Nordau's 
alternatives.  Personally,  I  should  be  terribly 
bored  by  the  memory  of  mundane  loves  and 
hates  through  all  eternity.  Those  who  cling  to 
107 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

this  memory  seem  to  forget  that  love  is  not 
always  a  "grande  passion,"  and  that  hate  is 
often  despicable.  But  if  they  mean  that  only 
those  things  that  are  honest  and  of  good  repute 
will  survive,  I  am  with  them,  with  this  difference 
— that  I  hold  humanity  will  disappear  altogether, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  frail. 

Then  nothingness  is  inconceivable.  It  is  one 
of  the  unthinkables  of  life.  So  far  as  our  two- 
foot  rule  enables  us  to  judge,  nothing  that  has 
been  can  ever  cease  to  be. 

As  for  the  question  of  an  immortal  person- 
ality, verily  there  is  one  for  those  who  recognise 
in  this  life  that  they  are  but  part  of  a  great  whole. 


108 


WHAT  IS  IT  THAT  SURVIVES? 

By  LADY   GROVE 

WHEN  so  many  learned  divines  and  dis- 
tinguished philosophers  have  written  on  the  sub- 
ject of  what  happens  to  the  human  personality 
after  death,  I  can  hardly  think  that  my  opinion, 
even  if  I  had  one — which  I  have  not — can  be  of 
great  value.  What  I  do  think,  however,  is  that 
it  is  futile  to  inquire  into  the  unknowable,  and 
also  that,  as  each  individual  varies  during  his 
lifetime  to  such  an  extent  as  hardly  to  re- 
tain the  same  individuality  manifested  at 
one  time  or  other  of  his  existence,  it  may  be 
worth  while  to  inquire  what  it  is  that  is  supposed 
to  survive  after  death  of  all  the  complex  phases 
and  characteristics  and  characters  even  that  go 
to  make  up  one  single  human  organism. 


109 


THE  SIMPLEST  FAITHS  ARE  BEST 

By  LEE   DANVERS 

To  construct  is  always  better  than  to  destroy,  to 
build  up  better  than  to  pull  down ;  therefore,  the 
simple,  unquestioning  faith  of  the  Christian  in 
a  life  after  death  must  obviously  be  finer  than 
the  complicated  reasoning  of  the  scientist  and 
the  discontented  questioning  of  the  unbeliever. 
For  Christianity  constructs  a  Hereafter,  whereas 
most  of  the  scientists  and  all  of  the  unbelievers 
do  their  best  to  demolish  the  Christian  idea 
of  a  Hereafter  without  seeking  to  supply  any 
substitute. 

What  happens  to  us  when  we  die  ?  Accord- 
ing to  the  Christians  we  live  again ;  according 
to  the  unbeliever  we  do  not  live  again;  accord- 
ing to  the  scientist  it  is  impossible  that  we 
should  live  again,  except  as  part  of  the  im- 
personal force  which  they  call  "matter."  The 
Christian  used  to  believe  in  a  life  after  death 
that  should  consist  of  becoming  an  ethereal 
creature  with  wings  on  one's  shoulders  and  a 
harp  in  one's  hands,  and  eternity  was  pictured 
very  largely  as  an  eternity  of  music.  Such 
a  belief  is  grotesquely  absurd  according  to  the 

no 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

scientist  and  the  unbeliever,  but,  at  least,  it  is 
more  attractive  than  a  belief  in  nothingness  or 
nothing  in  particular  after  death. 

The  Christian  has  virtually  ceased  nowadays 
to  believe  that  he  will  become  an  angel  and  spend 
the  timeless  space  of  the  everlasting  in  singing. 
The  parsons  have  listened  uneasily  to  the  voice 
of  science,  they  have  tried  to  accommodate  re- 
ligion to  the  discoveries  of  men,  and  they  have 
ceased  to  preach  a  wonderful  gospel  in  a  simple 
way.  But  religion  has  not  gained  anything  by 
its  adaptation  to  the  scientific  thought  of  the 
twentieth  century.  It  seems  quite  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  we  shall  not  become  angels  when 
we  die ;  indeed,  it  seems  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  there  never  was  such  a  being  as  an  angel, 
but,  all  the  same,  angels  serve  a  very  useful 
purpose,  if  not  as  facts  at  least  as  figures. 

A  disembodied  spirit  could  not  possibly  wear 
wings  on  its  shoulders,  since  it  would  have  no 
shoulders,  but  the  wings  are  excellent  as  a 
symbol.  A  disembodied  spirit  could  not  hold  a 
harp,  let  alone  play  on  it,  since  it  would  have 
no  hands  or  fingers,  but  the  celestial  harp  is 
quite  a  beautiful  image.  One  cannot,  in  any 
practical  way,  think  of  eternal  music,  but,  then, 
one  cannot  think,  in  any  practical  way,  of  death 
once  the  earth  has  been  filled  in  about  a  grave, 
because  the  rest  is  mystery.  Yet  music,  because 
it  stirs  our  deepest  emotions  and  creates  long- 
iii 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

ings  which  we  cannot  understand,  is  a  perfect 
means  of  expressing  the  inexplicable  mystery  of 
eternity. 

The  wings  and  the  harp  and  the  music  are 
held  nowadays  to  be  the  childish  figments  of 
childlike  minds,  and  the  ministers  of  the  gospel 
have  agreed  to  banish  them  from  their  talk  of 
an  after-life  out  of  deference  to  the  fact  that 
humanity  has,  so  to  speak,  grown  up.  But 
those  things  ought  not  to  be  banished ;  we  need 
them. 

In  the  face  of  eternity  we  are  as  much  chil- 
dren to-day  as  when  the  world  began.  We 
have  grown  accustomed  ^to  the  system  that 
governs  the  universe,  we  have  given  common- 
place names  to  things  we  do  not  understand, 
and  deceived  ourselves,  with  the  names,  into  the 
belief  that  we  understand  them.  But  our  vaunted 
knowledge  of  the  universe  is  purely  a  superficial 
knowledge.  We  know  that  the  earth  revolves 
on  its  own  axis.  Do  we  know  why  it  revolves? 
We  say  that  the  sun  is  so  many  miles  from  the 
earth.  Do  we  know  any  more  than  Adam  knew 
how  it  came  there,  and  why  it  stays  immovable 
in  space  ?  We  are  children  in  these  matters — 
children  who  have  adopted  an  air  of  grown-up 
wisdom.  And  because  the  sun  shone  through 
all  the  yesterdays  we  call  it  reasonable  to  expect 
that  it  will  shine  to-morrow,  whereas,  in  truth, 
there  is  no  reason  in  it,  but  only  natural  human 

112 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

expectation.  Similarly,  we  dare  to  "reason" 
about  death,  which,  of  itself,  has  never  given  us 
any  sort  of  human  expectation. 

Reason  is  a  useful  thing  to  apply  to  the  com- 
monplace incidents  of  everyday  life,  but  death 
is  utterly  beyond  the  domain  of  reason ;  there- 
fore, we  cannot  reason  about  it.  We  can  only 
have  faith,  or  be  lacking  in  faith,  concerning 
what  it  conceals.  We  can  speculate  concerning 
its  meaning,  or  we  can  decide  to  leave  it  out  of 
our  thoughts,  but  we  cannot  argue  about  it  and 
prove  our  arguments  right  before  we  ourselves 
die.  No.  So  far  as  death  is  concerned,  we  are 
still  children,  and  therefore  we  should  do  better 
to  cling  to  childish  symbols  than  to  throw  them 
scornfully  away. 

Wings  are  suggestive  of  a  state  superior  to 
the  human  state ;  harps  are  suggestive  of  happi- 
ness transcending  all  known  forms  of  human 
happiness;  music  is  suggestive  of  an  utterly 
different  condition  of  existence  to  the  conditions 
of  our  present  existence.  In  a  literal  sense  they 
may  seem  absurd  as  heirlooms  of  death,  but  in 
a  symbolic  sense  they  stand  for  a  higher,  finer 
existence  than  earthly  life;  why,  then,  should  we 
not  cling  to  them  ? 

It  may  be  true,  as  some  would  have  us 
believe,  that  there  is  no  future  life  for  any  of 
us;  that  when  we  die  nothing  happens  except 
the  thing  which  is  obvious  to  us  all — the  decom- 

"3 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

position  of  our  bodies;  but,  at  least,  it  is  no 
more  "reasonable"  to  think  that  death  means 
nothingness  than  to  think  that  death  means  a 
spiritual  world  of  infinite  grandeur,  infinite 
happiness,  for  all  who  strive  to  deserve  it.  And 
it  is  vastly  less  satisfactory.  The  doctrine  that 
when  we  are  dead  we  are  dead  for  all  time  is 
not  a  doctrine  that  helps;  on  the  contrary,  it  is 
one  that  discourages  goodness,  encourages  law- 
lessness ;  it  is  one  that  favours  a  pitiful  state  of 
existence  in  this  world  because  it  denudes  us  of 
all  incentive  to  live  well. 

If  everyone  believed  that  death  meant  utter 
annihilation  the  world  would  promptly  become 
a  place  of  unspeakable  horror.  It  is  all  very 
well  to  argue  that  many  people  would  live 
honestly,  soberly,  and  decently,  that  they  would 
do  right  for  the  mere  sake  of  doing  right;  but 
we  all  know  well  enough  that  the  majority  would 
do  wrong,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  so  very 
much  easier  to  do  wrong  than  to  do  right.  Let 
us  not  deceive  ourselves.  It  is  the  simple  faith 
of  the  bulk  of  mankind  in  a  life  after  death 
of  infinite  possibilities  that  prevents  the  world 
from  becoming  a  hell  of  madness,  murder,  and 
debauchery. 

If  the  scientists  and  the  unbelievers  had  their 

way  they  would  destroy  this  faith,  giving  us  no 

other   faith    in    its   stead — and   there   would   be 

nothing  left  to  live  for.     But  just  as  it  is  im- 

114 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

possible  for  any  rational  being  to  disbelieve  in 
God,  so  it  is  impossible  for  any  sensible  being 
to  disbelieve  in  a  Hereafter.  There  could  not 
be  a  world  without  a  God,  let  alone  a  million 
worlds,  and  there  could  not  be  death  without 
a  future  state.  Do  you  suppose  that  God  would 
have  put  the  craving — the  need — for  a  future 
life  in  our  souls  if  there  were,  in  fact,  no  future 
life  for  us  ? 

But,  the  "  reasoning  "  man  may  argue,  how 
can  there  be  a  future  life  for  us  if  we  know 
nothing  about  it?  The  only  necessary  answer 
lies,  I  think,  in  another  question  :  How  could  we 
be  content  with  this  life  if  we  knew  that  it  were 
temporarily  withholding  us  from  a  far  more  per- 
fect life  ?  We  do  not  know  exactly  what  happens 
to  us  when  we  die,  because  it  is  not  good  for  us 
to  know ;  but  in  every  human  soul  has  been  im- 
planted a  yearning  for  something  after  death — 
for  a  light  beyond  the  veil  of  darkness — and  that 
yearning  is  so  strong,  so  universal,  that  it  must 
necessarily  make  even  the  most  matter-of-fact 
scientific  man  pause  at  times,  though  it  were 
idle  to  expect  him  to  confess  such  a  thing  to  his 
fellow-creatures. 

A  belief  that  death  is  the  end  of  all  things 
is  as  impossible  as  a  belief  that  there  is  no  God. 
The  atheist  declares  that  there  is  no  God,  but 
the  real  truth  is  that  there  is  no  atheist.  There 
are  professed  atheists,  just  as  there  are  pro- 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

fessed  Christians,  but  there  is  no  genuine  atheist. 
There  is  no  man  or  woman  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  who  does  not  believe  in  the  existence  of 
an  omnipotent  God.  Atheism  is  nothing  more 
than  a  wanton,  impotent  bravado.  It  is  a  sheer 
impossibility  for  anyone  to  live  and  disbelieve 
in  an  Almighty,  no  matter  what  name  you  may 
bestow  upon  Him. 

And  so  we  come  back  to  the  wings  and  the 
harps  and  the  music,  for  these  are  the  symbols 
of  simple  faith,  and  simple  faith  is  best.  Christi- 
anity may  be  assailed,  but  it  has  endured 
and  spread  these  nineteen  hundred  years.  The 
Bible  may  be  full  of  faults  and  contradictions, 
but  it  has  been  the  biggest  power  in  the  world 
for  many  centuries.  The  man  who  believes 
in  God,  in  Christ,  and  in  the  Bible,  may  be 
able  to  produce  but  little  evidence  in  support 
of  his  beliefs  satisfactory  to  men  of  science  and 
infidels,  but  the  fact  that  he  is  happier  than  the 
man  who  does  not  believe  in  God,  or  Christ,  or 
the  Bible,  is  more  than  sufficient  justification 
for  all  who  are  prepared  to  accept  mysteries  as 
mysteries  and  not  as  myths. 

We  are  children,  and  as  children  we  must 
accept  the  big  but  hidden  truths  of  life  and 
death,  believing  of  them  what  it  is  best  for  us 
to  believe.  The  Christian  religion  teaches  that 
death  is  but  a  dark  passageway  to  a  brighter 
world.  There  could  not  be  a  more  attractive 
116 


What  Happens  After  Death? 

teaching  than  that ;  why,  then,  should  any  of  us 
feel  inclined  to  turn  from  it  to  gloomier  teach- 
ings ?  Because  reason  urges  us  ? 

Decidedly  not,  for  what,  after  all,  is  reason 
but  the  working  of  a  mind  in  a  sensible  way 
when  dealing  with  known  things  or  things 
arising  out  of  known  circumstances;  and  how 
can  it  proceed  in  a  sensible  way  from  known 
things  to  unknown  things  ?  Why,  not  even 
death  itself  appears  to  be  reasonable.  Some  of 
our  cleverest  men  are  cut  off  at  the  moment  of 
their  existence  when  they  would  be  of  the 
greatest  possible  profit  to  the  world.  If  reason 
cannot  explain  why  this  should  happen,  how 
can  reason  explain  what  does  or  does  not  happen 
to  these  men  after  they  have  been  cut  off  ? 

The  simplest  faiths  are  best,  not  merely  be- 
cause they  are  simple,  but  because  they  are 
comforting  and  ennobling.  They  help,  whereas 
lack  of  faith  hinders.  Far  better,  surely,  to  die 
confident  of  life  to  come  than  to  die  in  despair. 
And  far  better  than  all  the  arguments  in  favour 
of  nothingness  after  death  must  be  the  symbols 
of  the  wings  and  the  harps  and  the  music,  since 
they  serve  to  uplift  mankind  rather  than  to  crush 
mankind  down. 


PRINTED  BY 

CASSELL  &  COMPANY,  LIMITED, 

LA  BELLE  SAUVAGE,  LONDON,  E.G. 

30.116 


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DEC     2 


IQ'j 


JUN  0  6  2003 
AY  1 7 


15138 


3 


193S 


DEC   4   1939 
JUN    16  iy45 

130ct52HW 


1  3  ,952 
31352LU 


360 


LD  21-50m-8, 


615832 


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